So Many Birds, So Little Time (or Bands)

The morning began just before sunrise with competing Great Horned Owls calling back and forth across Oliver Reservoir in the far southwest of the Nebraska panhandle. It was the first chilly fall-like morning of early September and my bird banding experience was about to begin, but the project had been going on already for days by Audubon Great Plains’ Avian Biologist Stephen Brenner. I was there to help, learn, and enjoy for my own professional development, but also to share the story of our bird research being done across the Great Plains and remind everyone (and myself) that birds are more than just indicators and data, they are connectors. Connectors across communities, landscapes, and boundaries.  

“Songbird migration in the western Great Plains is a bit of a mystery,” says Stephen, my partner and teacher on this fall bird-banding excursion.  “Every year is different, from the number of birds to what species we can even expect.”  I asked Stephen to elucidate and tell me more about the project we were working on. He went on to explain, “With banding, we can get information that other types of surveys can’t get, such as age, body condition, molt status, and sometimes even the population these birds originated from. All of this is new information for the region but also much needed.”  I was excited to help and learn, and in just a few minutes, we would check four nets arranged around the woodland edges of the reservoir to see what birds we’d caught and what data they could tell us.  And wow did they tell us! 

Just over four hours later we had captured, banded, measured, and released over 60 birds of several migrating species, like Red-breasted Nuthatches, Gray Catbirds, and beautiful Townsend’s Warblers. But the majority of birds (over 40 of them) that day were Wilson’s Warblers (WIWAs). And they just kept coming.  The next morning, we captured over 90 birds in the nets, over half of them were WIWAs. Needless to say, this kept us busy all morning and nearly exhausted our supply of the tiny bands for this species. I thought to myself, “What an amazing problem to have, catching and getting to see and study so many birds!” 

But why were so many of these tiny yellow birds with adorable black “toupees” stopping here and, even more interesting (and a bit concerning), why did so many of them have very little fat for migration built up? Sometimes in science, our original questions lead to more or better questions, and perhaps that is what the WIWAs were telling us. Look closer. Learn more. As I thought about this and sat in exhausted yet amazed happiness from getting to see and learn from these tiny feathered ambassadors, I asked Stephen again his thoughts. 

Banding birds on their migration can reveal all sorts of information. For the Wilson’s Warbler and others like the Townsend’s Warbler, Swainson’s Thrush, and several western species of flycatcher, it can also help us to answer not only the ‘which species’ and ‘when they arrive questions,’ but perhaps lead us to ask if they are stopping in western Nebraska to refuel or are they stopping because loss of other habitat has given them no other choice?  Has the habitat degraded over time but the birds evolved to stop here?  If only we could ask the birds directly. (Believe me, I tried, but my bird must not have been the right dialect.) 

Stephen continues to work on these (and more) important questions on bird migration in the western Great Plains and I was the lucky one that for just two short mornings – eight hours in total – got to experience it. And while all the questions weren’t answered at once, I certainly feel more connected to the birds, and this in turn allows me to connect these astounding feathered travelers to the people and communities that may not even know they sneak by every fall. And it truly made me realize how many of these itty-bitty batteries with wings depend on us, whether we realize it or not, to keep their homes, habitats, and especially their stopovers and rest stops, clean, healthy, and thriving.  I see you, Wilson’s Warblers!