At Bent-Of-The-River Audubon Center—

Bird Banding Demonstrations Every Sunday

SOUTHBURY –– Researchers at the Audubon Center at Bent-of-the-River will be banding birds during fair weather on Sunday mornings from 6 am to approximately 11 am, starting September 11 and continuing throughout fall migration into November.

The demonstrations are being led by master bander Mark Szantyr, and visitors are invited to watch, learn, and participate.

Migrant and resident birds will be captured in mist nets, which are set out in the cedar fields south of the Audubon Barn. The birds are then brought into the barn where they will be fitted with lightweight leg bands, measured, and then released. This is a great opportunity for children and parents to see birds up close, note their markings, and observe distinctive features not visible from afar.

Over many years of recordkeeping, organized bird banding efforts have provided valuable data about the behavior and social structure of birds, their life span and survival rate, reproductive success and population growth, as well as their dispersal and migration patterns.

Mark Szantyr, an art teacher and illustrator by trade, has been banding birds for many years. He is a member of the Connecticut Ornithological Association (COA) and Secretary of the COA’s Avian Records Committee of Connecticut, which maintains the official Connecticut State list of bird species that occur or have occurred in Connecticut.

The Audubon Center at Bent-of-the-River is a 694-acre wildlife sanctuary and nature education center owned and managed by the National Audubon Society. It is home to many species of birds, mammals, butterflies, and amphibians, as well as a rich diversity of tree and plant life. The grounds surrounding the education barn, and more than 15 miles of trails, are open to visitors seven days a week during daylight hours. Special group tours can be arranged by calling the Bent at 264-5098, Monday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm.

Bent-of-the-River is located on East Flat Hill Road in South Britain, about a half mile from Connecticut Route 172 off of I-84 (Exit 14).

 

Audubon Was First Bird Bander

Bird banding has a recorded history that extends back to 1595 in England when one of Henry IV’s banded peregrine falcons, lost in pursuit of a “bustard” or buzzard in France, was discovered 24 hours later in Malta. It had traveled 1,350 miles averaging a speed of 56 miles per hour.

In 1804, John James Audubon, the American explorer, ornithologist, and wildlife artist who inspired the founders of the National Audubon Society in 1905, was the first to record experiences in bird banding in North America.

While a young man living outside of Philadelphia, he became curious about whether a brood of phoebes, which he called “pewees,” being raised in a nest above the entrance to a nearby cave would return the next year. His journals provide an interesting account of the earliest first known bird banding activity in this country.

These [the very light banding threads that Audubon first tied to the nestlings’ feet] they invariably removed, either with their bills, or with the assistance of their parents. I renewed them, however, until I found the little fellows habituated to them; and at last, when they were about to leave the nest, I fixed a light silver thread to the leg of each –– loose enough not to hurt the part, but so fastened that no exertions of theirs could remove it.

By October 8, all the phoebes had departed the area and the following spring Audubon found two of the phoebes had returned that still carried the silver threads. They were nesting in a Mill Grove, Penn., grain shed not far away from the cave site.