{"id":22729,"date":"2014-03-19T05:49:50","date_gmt":"2014-03-19T11:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=22729"},"modified":"2014-03-19T06:30:15","modified_gmt":"2014-03-19T12:30:15","slug":"the-value-and-rewards-of-reporting-banded-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/19\/the-value-and-rewards-of-reporting-banded-birds\/","title":{"rendered":"The Value (and rewards) Of Reporting Banded Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago I reported a banded Tundra Swan I photographed at Salt Creek WMA.\u00a0 It\u00a0wasn’t long before I received some interesting information back about that bird from the North American Bird Banding Program.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"tundra<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the swan I reported.\u00a0 The reporting process was quick and easy, including sending them this photo.\u00a0 The image is of poor quality but the neck-band can easily be read\u00a0(U204) and that’s all that was needed.\u00a0 Twelve days later I received the following email from the banding lab (it isn’t a short read but it does a good job of explaining the need for banding programs).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“The North American Bird Banding Program<\/em><\/p>\n

Bird banding is important for studying the movement, survival and behavior of birds. About 60 million birds representing hundreds of species have been banded in North America since 1904.\u00a0 About 4 million bands have been recovered and reported.<\/em><\/p>\n

Data from banded\u00a0birds are used in monitoring populations, setting hunting regulations, restoring endangered species, studying effects of environmental contaminants, and addressing such issues as Avian Influenza, bird hazards at airports, and crop depredations. Results from banding studies support national and international bird conservation programs such as Partners in Flight, the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, and Wetlands for the Americas.<\/em><\/p>\n

The North American Bird Banding Program is under the general direction of the U.S. Geological Survey and the Canadian Wildlife Service. Cooperators include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Mexico’s National commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity and Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources; other federal, state and provincial conservation agencies; universities; amateur ornithologists; bird observatories; nature centers; nongovernmental organizations such as Ducks Unlimited and the National Audubon Society; environmental consulting firms and other private sector businesses. However, the most important partner in this cooperative venture is you, the person who voluntarily reported a recovered band. Thank you for your help.<\/em><\/p>\n

U.S.<\/em>
\n Geological Survey<\/em>
\n Canadian Wildlife Service<\/em><\/p>\n

Please Report Bands at<\/em><\/p>\n

www.reportband.gov<\/a>
\nor<\/em>
\n call<\/em>
\n 1-800-327-BAND”<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"USGS<\/a><\/p>\n

Attached to the email was this Certificate of Appreciation that provided information about the swan that I found fascinating\u00a0 – including the date and exact\u00a0location of banding, sex of the bird and the\u00a0name of the bander (for some reason they’re still using the old name for the species – “Whistling Swan”).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"north<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Creative Commons image, I have added the red arrows and text<\/em><\/p>\n

So “my” male\u00a0swan is almost\u00a09 years old (possibly even older) and was\u00a0banded in 2006\u00a0by\u00a0Dennis Marks\u00a0in a remote area of Alaska (I looked up the coordinates for this map).\u00a0 It was banded approximately 2700 air miles from where I photographed the bird and it has made that\u00a0one-way trip at least 17 times in its lifetime (since it’s likely this bird winters in California, each one-way\u00a0trip would have been significantly longer than 2700 miles).\u00a0 Pretty impressive.<\/p>\n

As a nature photographer who specializes in birds\u00a0I’m not a fan of finding artificial “jewelry” on my subjects but I enthusiastically support any effort that potentially supports healthy populations of birds – including the efforts of the North American Bird Banding Program.\u00a0I encourage others to report banding information (either\u00a0leg or neck bands) to the banding lab (link and phone\u00a0number\u00a0provided above).\u00a0 Only about 7% of banded birds are ever reported or recovered – imagine how valuable it would be if that record could be significantly improved.<\/p>\n

These days, birds need all the help they can get.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago I reported a banded Tundra Swan I photographed at Salt Creek WMA. It wasn’t long before I received some interesting information back about that bird from the North American Bird Banding Program.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,8,395,1912],"tags":[1917,1914,866,1916,1918,1915,1913,311],"class_list":["post-22729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-miscellaneous","category-tundra-swans","tag-alaska","tag-cyanus-columbianus","tag-migration","tag-north-american-bird-banding-program","tag-reporting-bird-bands","tag-saalt-creek-waterfowl-management-area","tag-tundra-swan","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/tundra-swan-5785-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5UB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}