Banding Songbirds at Dawn: The MAPS Program in National Parks

In 1989, the Institute for Bird Populations (IBP) launched MAPS — Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship — with bird-banding stations across North America. It has grown into the longest-running and largest program in America studying the demographic rates of birds.

Each station — run by a mix of public agencies, private groups and dedicated individuals — feeds a large, detailed database that ecologists use to study birds that are constantly on the move.

Glacier National Park's MAPS station, one of 25 active in national parks in 2024. NPS

Why parks matter

Stations in national parks are especially valuable because the land is protected from development and extractive industry. For migrating birds, parks are wild "rest stops" along the route, or the final destination where breeding begins. Park scientists work alongside researchers in the U.S., Mexico and Canada to track how birds are faring.

A day at a MAPS station

It's a commitment. Every ten days from May through August, trained, permitted banders are up before sunrise and in the field for more than seven hours:

1. put up the mist nets;
2. check them every thirty minutes;
3. process, record and band every bird caught.

Recording data from a chipping sparrow at Grand Teton National Park. NPS

What they measure

Banders also read a bird's feathers for its molt, breeding condition and age. Tracking births and lifespans across the continent lets conservationists pinpoint where in a bird's life cycle a population is declining.

Rangers at Yellowstone National Park's MAPS station inspect the wings of a red-naped sapsucker. NPS

What MAPS has shown

• Weather — especially rain — strongly affects how many young birds are raised and how many adults survive.
• Birds are sensitive to a warming climate and to drastic swings in weather. As spring, and then summer, come earlier, research using MAPS data indicates that birds aren't shifting the timing of their breeding fast enough — and after a hard season, raising chicks can be close to hopeless.

As one of the people involved puts it, bird populations and their surroundings are changing fast with the climate. Landbirds and songbirds are indicators of the environment as a whole: when their populations are unhealthy, it signals bigger problems.

Sources

Based on "Taking Flight," National Park Service, Glacier National Park; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The article's closing quotation, whose speaker isn't named, is paraphrased; its claim linking falling body sizes to breeding timing is left out, as the linked study concerns breeding timing. Rewritten in hubnx's own words.