I Want to Learn How to Band Birds!

      I get one of these emails a half dozen times a year.  On one hand this is not particularly surprising.  I operate one of the few (only?) year round constant effort bird banding stations in southern California.  Since I have been operating this station for over 15 years, I am fairly well known throughout the ornithological community of southern California (and beyond), so ornithologists point people in my direction.  Simply Googling bird banding, southern California, Walt Sakai, etc will bring me up.  So I am not hard to find.

    The problem I have encountered is that people think this is the fast track to learning birds, learning to be a bird bander, and learning field biology.

    Learning birds:  It is real cool to see birds up close and in hand.  Certainly it is much easier than looking at birds flitting through the shrubbery with a pair of binoculars.  A typical comment is "gosh, this is the first time I've ever gotten a good view of a Wrentit," the most common bird we catch.  But we capture and band maybe half of the birds seen in one canyon (Zuma Canyon) in one particular habitat (chaparral) in the Santa Monica Mountains.  On a typical day, we capture between 15-20 species and 50 individuals.  There are over 600 species of birds seen in California.  In my younger days, when I first decided to learn my birds, I spent almost every weekend for two years going out across the state by myself, with friend, on Audubon field trips, etc to merely begin to learn my birds.

    Learning to be a bird bander:  Again, it is cool to see birds up close and in hand.  Getting up at 4:30a while it is still dark, driving on the roads when there is no one else on the Ventura Freeway, getting to the site before dawn when it is freezing cold, only to be ready to work at sunrise, seems fun the first time.  Anyone can do that.  I've had six year olds come out to bird banding.  I know when someone is truly interested in bird banding when he/she starts to come out over and over again.  Like anything else, you get to do a lot of watching initially and will slowly get hands on experience.  There is quite a learning curve as identifying the bird is the easy part.  A good ornithology course helps, as you need to learn bird  topography, bird anatomy, bird physiology, molts, etc., because you must learn how to age and sex the bird as well.
    The weather is hot or cold (never mild).  There is a lot of walking for more than six hours.  We start at sunrise, setting up mist nets and banding for six hours.  It then takes an hour or more to take down ~12-17 mist nets, clean up, pack up, and head home.  Add travel time, by the time you get home you will have spent a good 8-9 hours. 

    Repetition:  Typically, at my station there is an eclectic crew of banders.  Some have been banding with me for 10+ years, while others are newbies.  Some are retired, others are professions in a variety of careers, and yet others are young college students.  The group has been good about teaching and learning from each other.  Typically, there may be a half dozen bodies.  Since we usually catch ~50 birds per cycle (morning), you may get to process (our term for banding) about 8-9 birds.  Another reason it takes a long time to becoming good at this.

    How long does it take to learn all of this?:  At a minimum, it takes a full year to see and experience everything.  Besides the resident birds, there are the summer visitors, the fall and spring migrants, and the winter visitors.  You need to learn the alternate plumage as well as the basic plumage.  You need to be able to recognize breeding vs non-breeding condition.  You need to be able to skull a bird and see open and closed skulls through the course of a year.  You need to learn molt limits, something that even I have difficulty with at times.
    And you need to learn how to set up a 12 m long x 2.8 m high mist net... alone.  You need to be able to extract a bird from the mist net.

    To become "good" at this?  You will probably want to band with me for a year, and then you really need to go to a major bird banding station, and band there six days a week for several months.  I've had a number of individuals who have had banding experience come to our station to hone and upgrade their skills.  Several graduate students have gone on to work on their dissertations, but I don't think I can teach what you need to know in one season, so you can go out into the field to complete a thesis project.

    Permit:  You need a federal permit to band birds.  To become a Master Bander to be able to band solo without being accountable (within reason), many years of banding with lots of experience under another Master Bander is required.  A Subpermit allows you to band under  the authority of a Master Bander.  To reach this level requires a few less years.  Do not expect me to give you a subpermit, even if you came out diligently every banding cycle (every two weeks) for a year.  The only exceptions have been to a couple of subpermits for very restricted situations, e.g. chicks in bluebird boxes or small owls.