Session completes banding season for Friends

Bird banding volunteers with the Friends of Jasper National Park got up at the crack of dawn one more time last week to head out to their sixth and final field day of the season.

The troupe hiked out at 4 a.m. on Aug. 6 and set up a mosquito tent at a site off the Ho-Chi-Min trail near Pyramid Lake and followed their usual routine. 

A typical day includes small-talk outside the tent, spraying loads of insect repellent and anticipating the timer’s bell. When it rings the volunteers depart in small groups to check the 10 nets that are set up in the same place each time. When a bird collides with the net, it falls into a pocket where the soft mesh is folded upwards. 

The volunteers carefully remove the birds and slip them into what look like miniature pillow cases, then return and deliver their parcels to the mosquito tent and wait for the bell to ring in another 20 minutes. They spend six hours doing this for each of six sessions over the summer. 

Inside the mosquito tent is station bird bander Brenda Shepherd, whose focus is analyzing the productivity and survival of birds in the area. “The whole idea is to get a sense how many are surviving the winter and coming back,” she said. “Ultimately what we want to know is how old the bird is.” She also notes its gender, how healthy it is, the amount of fat it has, and whether it’s injured. 

Shepherd learned how to band from Stefan Jungkind, a highly-qualified Edmonton bander who was recruited when the Friends of Jasper decided to start a bird-banding station. Three summers gave her the experience to become the dedicated bander for Jasper’s station which is now five years old. It’s part of a network of about 500 stations in North America that record and share data with the United States department of fish and wildlife. 

“All the stations from Texas to the Yukon do it the same way,” she said. Researchers use the combined information to determine where troubles lie. “If biologists see a decline they can look at the data to determine where the problem is - the winter versus the breeding ground,” Shepherd said.

The last thing she does before setting it free is clip a tiny metallic band around the bird’s leg just above its foot. Each band has a unique identification number, which is sent to fish and wildlife along with the rest of the report.

Some of the usual birds to get snagged in the nets are Lincoln Sparrows and Wilson’s Warblers. The largest bird Shepherd remembers banding was a yellow-bellied sap sucker, a variety of woodpecker. One of the tools on the white plastic patio table inside the mosquito tent with the hand sanitizer and record-keeping binders is a bird identification book.

It’s a lot of work, so the more sets of hands the better. “You need a lot of people because there are so many nets to check,” Shepherd said. “We couldn’t do it without a good number of committed volunteers. That’s what’s done it for this program, we have about 20 volunteers.”

For Shepherd, it’s difficult to pinpoint what she loves most about bird banding. “It’s great when you capture a bird you captured three or four years ago now that it’s travelled to Costa Rica three times since you’ve seen it last,” she said. “And I think the other thing is it’s just a fun atmosphere being out there in a beautiful setting.”

The banders will be back at it starting next June.