Bird Banding: Hermit Thrush
What is bird banding?
This morning, a group of students from one of our local schools visited Westmoreland for a very special activity: bird banding. Bird banding is the process of catching wild birds; identifying their species, relative age, and sex (if possible); and then putting a small, light aluminum band with a unique serial number around one of their legs.
Our Director of Conservation, Steve Ricker, is federally licensed and all of our data is uploaded into a federal database. This information helps us know that our protected habitats are continuing to provide high-quality water, food, and shelter for our wonderful wildlife. It also helps us track bird migration when birds are recaptured. If we capture a bird that already has a band around its leg, we can find out where it was initially banded using the federal database.
Today, we caught a hermit thrush. They are short-range migrators. We live in a very special part of the hermit thrush's range. We are at the southern portion of the summer range and the northern portion of their winter range. In fact, some hermit thrushes here will not migrate at all and choose to live here all year round.
~ Westmoreland Staff
The band is opened using the pliers before being put on the hermit thrush's leg.
The hermit thrush poses for a photo after receiving a band. It was released into the wild after taking this photo.