CWF Wildlife Biologist Emmy Casper handling an oystercatcher chick captured for banding. Picture courtesy of Northside Jim
Those who have followed CWF’s work throughout the years know how important bird banding can be for wildlife biologists and conservationists. The practice, which involves placing metal and/or color bands on a bird’s legs, can provide useful information about that bird’s life history, site fidelity, and movement. Typically, banded shorebirds are equipped with a unique alphanumeric code or color combination (kind of like a name tag), which enables scientists to track an individual bird throughout its lifetime. For those monitoring New Jersey’s beach-nesting bird populations, bird banding greatly enhances the quality and accuracy of our productivity data, which allows us to make better-informed decisions regarding management.
There aren’t many times when you get to climb to the roof of a courthouse in a major metropolitan area. Except if you’re a raptor biologist! We recently joined NJ Fish & Wildlife’s Chief of the Endangered and Nongame Species Program, Kathy Clark and Union County staff and guests to band the four young falcons produced at a nest atop the Union County Courthouse, home to the Union County Falcon Cam.
Biologists Leah Wells and Meaghan Lyon banding a Big Brown Bat
Since 2018, CWF has partnered with the USFWS New Jersey Field Office in completing summer mist netting surveys for bats in the Pinelands. The goal of these surveys is to capture the federally threatened Northern long-eared bat and track these bats to maternity roosts.
Kathy Clark carefully places a young falcon in a reusable shopping bag.
On May 23, NJDEP Fish & Wildlife Supervisory Zoologist Kathy Clark and myself visited the Union County Courthouse in Elizabeth, NJ to band the three eyases that were produced by the nesting pair of peregrine falcons. We were joined by Union County staff and guests, who assisted with the banding. The nest is located on the roof of the building. As soon as the hatch made a sound, the adults took off and started to defend their nest and flightless young. As we enter their turf, we are dive bombed by the adults — it is clear that the female has become more aggressive — as she flies very close to us on the roof in sweeping dive bomb attacks. As Kathy goes to the nest to grab each young who are placed in reusable shopping bags, I use her trusty feather duster to ward off the adult female. All who enter the roof wear fall arrest harnesses and hard hats. Kathy and I know that the hard hats are not just worn for fall protection, but also from attacks from above. Both of us received bumps from the adult female to our helmets!
Two bald eaglets at the site of our Eagle Cam at Duke Farms were recently banded by biologists from Conserve Wildlife Foundation (CWF) and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Endangered and Nongame Species Program (NJDEP ENSP).
This year’s banding was special, as in addition to a band the male eaglet was also fitted with a transmitter which will allow him to be tracked on our Eagle Trax page.
View of transmitter on the male eaglet, on the right
Kathy Clark, (NJDEP ENSP), and Larissa Smith (CWF) wrote about the experience, and the benefits of transmitters on the Duke Farms blog. Their FAQ’s are reprinted below.
