The Bent of the River Audubon Heart is not any sports activities stadium, but it surely was nonetheless the positioning of an thrilling “grand slam” this yr—simply with birds, not baseballs.
Throughout a single session, their licensed chicken bander captured and banded every of their 4 focal species: a Prairie Warbler, a Area Sparrow, a Blue-winged Warbler, and an Indigo Bunting.
That is the primary time they’ve recorded all 4 in a single banding session, a win employees attribute to latest intensive administration of the middle’s Cedar Fields.
Within the fall, their crew eliminated timber, saplings, and invasive vegetation from the world to create wholesome early successional habitat for his or her focal species to nest in come spring. This administration work was knowledgeable by the middle’s common banding and territory mapping, which inform their employees which species are utilizing the early successional habitat, and the way.
It was extra intensive administration than they’d carried out in a number of years, and the outcomes had been almost instantaneous.
The variety of Prairie Warbler territories within the managed fields, for instance, jumped from 1 to five—a 400 per cent enhance that solely provides to the proof proven by a profitable season of chicken banding!
Every focal species chicken banded on the heart was launched with a random mixture of coloured “auxiliary” bands, along with the usual USGS aluminum band. The coloured bands assist employees determine particular person birds within the discipline with out having to seize them once more—together with the record-breaking 12-year-old Blue-winged Warbler that was re-sighted in 2025 and once more this spring.
As summer time winds down into autumn, employees will use this information to tell their early successional habitat plans for the season.
You possibly can add to this information by conserving an eye fixed out for color-banded birds on the Bent and reporting any sightings—and the particular preparations and colours of the bands—to bentoftheriver@audubon.org!
Please observe: Chicken banding is a extremely regulated scientific course of strictly performed by permitted professionals and Audubon’s biologists.
