By Charla Wurm-Adams
cwurm@wbcowqel.com

The 7th Annual Bird Banding program took place at Lowe-Volk Park on Saturday. The nets were placed out early in the morning to catch the early birds flying through the forest as they attempted to migrate.

Children had a chance to see and touch the birds and they were able to help release them after they were banded. After the birds were caught, they were taken to the Nature Center where they were analyzed for scientific data which was recorded for further study.

Professor Bob Scott Placier leads the project and explained.

“I think 12 birds with 11 species so that’s pretty good for diversity and this is International Migratory Bird Day which is always the second Saturday of May too as a kind of day to celebrate and look for and appreciate the migrate birds,” Placier said. “Several which we had today have traveled all the way from Central America, the Caribbean and some of those birds are actually going up to Lake Erie.”

A north wind affected the numbers of migrating birds in Lowe-Volk Park which was lower than it had been in past years.

“Then we caught some of the resident birds of course too. The idea of the banding is that, hopefully we’ll recapture or somebody will recapture some of those birds in the future and we’ll have some ideas about where they go to and from and how long they lived and that’s the kind of thing we get from the banding activity,” Placier said. “It gives people a chance to see birds up close in the hand and talk about them and explain more about their lives because a lot of them have problems or issues that they’re losing habitat either up here where they breed or down in the tropics where they are over winter or even issues with places that they want to stop to refuel as they go, losing those habitats.”

Because of the decreased numbers of migrating birds, a projected milestone was missed. But there is always next year.

“So it is a conservation activity, Migratory Bird Day as much as an appreciation. A lot of them are really colorful and interesting species. This is I think this is the 7th, I think Josh said this was the 7th migratory bird day that we have done here,” Placier said. “We are approaching 200 birds that we have banded here. I thought we might hit that today but we are going to fall a little bit short so we will get there to the 200 birds next spring for sure.”

Some of the birds captured and released Saturday included a Swainson’s thrush, a Great Cheek thrush, an oven bird, and a cow bird.