The Buzz of Bird Banding at Glacier National Park

A black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) in a wildlife biologist's hand. NPS.

Few things compare with holding a wild bird in your hand. A stillness settles in, your heart beats a little faster, and you feel both privileged and responsible for the small creature in your palm. Its body is oddly pliant as you turn it to check its underside; some birds stay quiet and watch you with heads cocked, others chirp until they're let go, unharmed. Holding one reveals how fragile birds are. Then you release it, watch it fly back into the woods, and breathe out.

The MAPS station

Before sunrise, a group of biologists and volunteers heads down an unmarked trail in Glacier National Park to run the park's MAPS station — Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship.

• MAPS was started nationally by the Institute for Bird Populations in 1989.
• More than 300 MAPS stations operate in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, each repeating the same routine as often as every ten days in summer.

How it works

1. Each station sets up ten fine mist nets where songbirds are likely to fly.
2. Once the first net is up, a 30-minute timer starts.
3. When it goes off, the team checks every net for birds.
4. Captured birds are processed and documented — so researchers can track them later — and the data go into the national MAPS database.
5. The cycle repeats for six hours. The earlier the sunrise, the earlier the start.

Biologists check reference materials and data sheets while banding birds. NPS.

Following the birds

The team is led by Lisa Bate, a Glacier wildlife biologist who started the park's MAPS station — moving tirelessly from net to net through waist-high grass and wildflowers, despite having been awake since 2:00 a.m., and focused entirely on the birds.

"With this program, we can really learn about the survivorship of the adults and juveniles and learn if the populations are increasing or decreasing and where that is occurring," Bate says. "Bird numbers are declining for a lot of species and it's important to track what's happening, especially in a national park because they're undeveloped and protected from extractive industries."

Sources

Based on "The Buzz of Bird Banding," Glacier National Park, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.