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SCHOLARSHIP REPORTS 2007

2007 Seattle Audubon Bird Banding Camp

13-17 August 2007

By Marie Lauzau

Me showing off the toilet

"Bird banding camp? That sounds interesting." After all, my goal for this summer was to have as many new experiences as I could. I have always been inspired by birds and have a deep love of science. Bird banding is a fascinating combination of both. I signed up for banding camp with no idea what I was getting myself into. I flew from Ohio all the way to Washington State to sleep in a tent without electronics or even a flushing toilet and I am so glad I did!

I landed in Washington the day before camp. A wonderful woman by the name of Georgette volunteered to host me and another girl from out of state. She picked us up at the airport and took us back to her house. Lauren, who had flown in from Georgia, and I were both very jet lagged. We arrived at Georgette's, ate what seemed to be a very late dinner, and went to bed. The next morning at breakfast I saw my first new birds of the trip; an Anna's Hummingbird and a Steller's Jay. Georgette drove us down to the Seattle Audubon Offices to meet up with the rest of the campers. This was where we learned the plan for the week.

Allie counting flight feathers on a Steller's Jay

I was excited but also nervous. I'd never gone camping before. We took a five hour drive from Seattle to the Cascade Mountains, stopping every now and then to do a little birding. I was immediately impressed by the instructors' knowledge of birds, plants, and animals. I got to see many other birds I'd never seen before, including the Cedar Waxwing, which can be identified by little red wax tips at the ends of the bird's flight feathers. I started then to understand just how different birds in the west were than those I knew at home. I had never even heard of most of the birds that the local campers knew as backyard birds. Everybody was very understanding of the fact that Lauren and I were a bit lost for a while.

The first thing we did when we got to our camp site was unload the van and set up our tents. We had two big tents; one for the boys and one for the girls. We started to learn how hard it is to get anything done in a group of people who all love birds in a place where birds are abundant. We ate and began to set up a few bird nets.

Cow

The question I get the most about banding is, "How do you get the birds?" The answer is with ten foot nets placed in areas where birds would be flying low. The netting is made so fine you can barely see it. When a bird hits the net it falls into a little pocket. The bird then tries to get out but only manages to get more tangled up, leaving them stuck there. Banders have to be careful and check the nets frequently to prevent the birds from having a premature death. If the nets are in the sun the birds will get too hot and die. They also don't have a lot of room for fat storage and this is a stressful event for them. Birds need to be processed as fast as possible. This sounds like a lot of risk but the people who are banding are the people who care most about birds and their health.

We waited 40 minutes before we checked the nets for birds. Sure enough, the nets had worked! Our instructors began to show us the proper way to hold birds and what to look for. The first thing we learned was how to scribe, or write the descriptions the processor was taking off birds on to the MAPS sheets. We then were able to try processing birds ourselves. We learned to read their age and sex, to measure their wings and to weigh them. The hardest thing for me to do was determining the birds age by their skulls. When birds are young their skulls are quite soft and pink. As they mature their skulls begin to harden and become white. You can see this process through their skin but it can be difficult to see, especially if the bird is molting.

Emmett with the Northern Flicker

After it got dark we went to bed. Without electricity it became hard to function after about 9:30 pm. It got very cold at night. It was disorienting to be able to see your breath in August. One night we went on an owl hunt. We were trying to spot a Pygmy Owl. We never found one but I've never seen so many stars at one time. We also got to see a few bats. In the mornings we would drink hot tea to warm up. Even those who don't like tea were drinking it by the end of camp.

At our first location we caught plenty Chipping Sparrows, a Steller's Jay, and a cow. The cows were loose in the national forest and one completely destroyed our bird net. We also caught a Rufous Hummingbird which I got to take out of the net and hold before we put it away. Unfortunately we couldn't band hummingbirds because they take very small bands for their very tiny legs. When I held the Rufous I never even saw its legs. Although the jay and the hummingbird were lovely, we moved locations to try and get more variety of birds. Our second location was Mini Meadows. Mini Meadows was full of mosquitoes but it was a great location for flycatchers and other insect eating birds. The first day at the meadows we got our first dose of what it's like to have nets full of birds. It's so exciting! I barely even minded that I was getting eaten alive. We caught a Northern Flicker, which was really fun. It did not really want to be banded but the boy who banded him did a nice job.

Me with a warbler

That night a weather front moved in and in the morning it was windy so we barely caught anything. It was pretty depressing. That afternoon some of the campers explored the surrounding areas looking for a new location. Some of us were completely worn out and stayed behind. The explorers picked a meadow at a higher elevation which happened to be across 2 streams. When they came back and told us about it they were enthusiastic insisting that there were more birds up there than they'd ever seen. I was cold enough at a lower elevation but I'd do anything for more birds. The next morning, the last day of camp, we woke up really early. Not only was it really early but it was the coldest morning yet. We headed up the mountain with our ten-foot poles and nets and all our banding equipment. We crossed the streams over a few slippery logs. Well at least some of us did. I slipped. I fell in and completely drenched everything below my shoulders. I've never been that cold in my life!

The rest of the trip to the meadow was uneventful, or if there were events I was too cold to notice. I was lucky that when we got to the meadow it was sunny. I'd been wearing a hoodie with a fleece jacket under it. My hoodie never did dry out but I was able to take it off and dry out okay as long as I avoided the shade. However cold I was it was worth it. The new meadow was just full of birds. We processed 80 birds just in the morning and let at least 15 go because we couldn't process them fast enough. The majority of the birds we caught there were Audubon's Yellow-rumped Warblers but we caught many other birds as well.

We headed back to Seattle that afternoon, arriving there with 7 smelly kids and quite a bit more dirt then we started with. Our wonderful hostess Georgette picked me and Lauren up from the Seattle Audubon Offices. She let us take showers at her house. We had been so grimy and covered in dirt I'm surprised she didn't take a hose to us before we went inside. Saturday morning I flew back to Ohio!

Now that I'm home I hope to use my newly gained knowledge to help banders in my area. I really enjoyed this camp. The experience was amazing. I never learned so much in just one week. I want to say thank you to Seattle Audubon, The American Birding Association, and Georgette Menth for helping me get out there and do this. I also need to thank Kristen Kosidowski and our instructors, Dan and Don, because without them we wouldn't have a camp. THANK YOU!!

These young birders attended the camps/events they report on with the help of ABA scholarships.