EDIT: Everything is posted now, so I’ll respond to any questions I can answer for you now. Enjoy, and I hope you learn some new things!
Went to a bird banding event held by Wildlands Conservancy last night. Unfortunately this year has been a bit of a poor showing due to the warm weather, and we didn’t end up with any owls.
There was still a great presentation on the owls of Pennsylvania and the bird banding process. We did get to meet some of the educational owls and handle some nice examples of things being discussed.
I got some time to talk to the guy running the banding and the lady running the animal education part of things and got some of my questions answered. I’ve been becoming really interested in learning more of the regulatory side of things. There is a real web of agencies that govern how wildlife can be handled.
This is the banding station.
The books in the back are detailed guides about all North American bird species. It’s a good reference to all kinds of weights and measurements they will take on any of the birds they’re banding.
The grey plastic box in front of the books is a caliper for detailed measurements.
The beige cloth bag is for transporting the birds from the mist nets to the station.
The leg sizing gauge is the metal thing under the bird bag with all the cut outs.
There is a scale for getting weights on the birds.
The 3 little lights are UV lights for aging the birds by checking their molt patterns.
You can kinda see the banding and debanding pliers at the base of the 3 lights.
The metal clipboard has all the paperwork to record the required observations and all the licensing required by the USGS to conduct the banding.
Some rulers for taking measurements of the wings, beak, etc
Off to the right, the board with little containers stuck to it has different size bird bands.
I tried to zoom in on the pliers, but didn’t have much luck. I had hoped they’d pass it around, but they did not.
He did have another one in his bag that looked like this one I’ve posted before with the band spreading post on the side. You can see here again though, there is nothing sharp to poke the bird with, it’s just a smooth hole that is sized bigger than the birds leg.
I did follow up on the question from our last banding talk about outgrowing bands.
Birds do not outgrow the bands. By the time they leave the nest, they are essentially full grown birds as far as their skeleton is concerned, so the tarsus where the band is placed is not really going to change in size. They do leave it loose enough that the feathers on the leg can move freely, so it is not snug to the leg either. Most owls have leg feathers while most other birds do not. It helps keep them silent in flight and to stay warm in colder climates.
This is really cool, thanks for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it! The full post is up now, so check back for anything new!
Here is a string of bands. I do have a big hand, but these bands were pretty small, as their goal was to band screech owls and saw whets, which are small owls.
A Screech Owl would probably be a bit larger than my fist, a Saw Whet is probably about the size of a more average fist.
The bands are made of aluminum, and you can see then stamped with serial numbers.
The small bands like these have ends that butt up together and aren’t crimped or fixed together since most birds can’t pull these off. Bands for eagles and other larger birds have crimps or bolts.
Barn Owl skull. Here you can see the boney eye structures that support those massive powerful eye tubes.
Owls have the best night vision, but the lady said hawks and falcons have much better overall vision. She said the Red Tailed Hawk essentially has a 20x optical zoom built into its eyes. For nocturnal vision though, the owl can’t be beat.
Just realized I didn’t really get you any good pics of the ear openings on the skull. You can kinda see them, but not as good as I could have gotten. Here’s a highlighted model for you instead.