Birds in Bondage

Submit! A Fox Sparrow being banded at Starr Ranch

A while back, Glenn and I were birding at San Joaquin marsh, and saw a Common Yellowthroat with a metal band on its leg. We knew that rare birds such as California Condors and Snowy Plovers are often captured and banded (or raised in captivity and banded before release), but we wondered about that Yellowthroat: why would anyone bother banding such an ordinary bird? Had it been sick? Or was there some other reason for this?

Yesterday, we finally found out. We attended an introductory bird-banding workshop sponsored by Starr Ranch Bird Observatory and California Audubon, and got to see bird banding up close—and we learned that even ordinary backyard birds are caught and banded so ornithologists can track migration and population patterns among different bird species.

We signed on for this partly out of curiosity, and partly so we'd be able to eventually help out with the banding efforts ourselves (what better way to get a really up-close and personal view of birds?) For understandable reasons, workshop participants weren't allowed to actively take part in the delicate process of catching and banding the birds, but we still got an eyeful. We watched at close range as the leaders set up nets to catch the birds, carefully extracted the birds that got caught in them, then banded, weighed, and examined them before releasing them:

The Fox Sparrow is free to leave. It had been placed in the pink canister for weighing.

One of the highlights of the workshop was its location: Starr Ranch, a gorgeously untouched parcel of oaks and sage scrub hidden inside a gated housing development near Mission Viejo. Turning from a wide, newly paved road lined with manicured hedges onto the one-way private road to Starr Ranch was like stepping into a time machine: Suddenly, no sidewalks. No lawns. No hedges or streetlights. Only a boulder-lined creek bed and a profusion of native trees and brush. Towhees and squirrels darted across the bumpy little road as we descended towards the ranch. How did this place manage not to get paved over?

At the ranch, a colony of Acorn Woodpeckers was busy filling its granaries for winter. They all managed to avoid the nets.



One of the two birds that did get caught during the hour or so the nets were up should have known better: an Oregon Junco that had been previously banded .The Audubon biologist leading the workshop weighed the bird, checked it for age and sex, and checked its old records before releasing it.

The rest of our weekend birding was a wash. A nagging voice in the back of my head kept telling me that I should be inside working, and maybe the windy weather and general absence of birds (at least birds visible or audible to me) was a cosmic reminder that I ought to heed that voice.

And I did—and I'm glad I did; I got a ton of stuff done. But there are still a few hours of daylight left; maybe I'll take a quick stroll through the hood to see if there are any warblers about.