LOCALadk Magazine

Spring 2020 LOCALadk Magazine 21 LOCALadk To band birds in New York State it takes a Federal Bird Banding License and a Special NYS-DEC Collection or Pro- cess-Banding License. I helped band birds for several years both at the Crown Point Banding Station and on Four Broth- ers Islands under Master Bander J.M.C . "Mike" Peterson, be- fore I got a sub-permittee license under Mike to band on my own at my house in 2006. Mike developed some health issues and Master Bander Gordon Howard picked up the running of the Crown Point Station in 2010. It was then that I became a sub-permittee of his, as did several other sub-permittees of Mike's. The bands for birds come from the US Department of the Interior and the Bird Banding Laborator y in Laurel, Mar y- land, where all the band reports go. If you don't like paper- work, you probably don't want to band birds. Bands come in different sizes: little bands for little birds and bigger bands for bigger birds, which is all spelled out in the Identification Guide to North American Birds by Peter Pyle. This book also helps you age and sex the birds that you have caught, as do the many bird identification books, which sometimes help to tell what kind of bird it might be if you don't already know. This information all goes in a chart after the band number, and is sent to the Banding Lab. If a bird is recaptured or found dead and reported, that bird can be tracked. I've had many birds that come to my feeding station recaptured year after year—some Black-capped Chickadees for as many as eight years. Some birds at the Crown Point Banding Station that spend their breeding season on-site have come back for more years than that. The Crown Point Banding Station will be celebrating its 45th year of operation in 2020, which makes it one of the lon- gest running banding stations in the nation. The station is in operation at the same time during spring migration for two weeks in the middle of May each year no matter what the weather—and we've seen it all the last few years. This year we will be running the nets from noon, Friday, May 8, to 5 p.m., through Saturday, May 23. The site is behind the fort (follow signs) at the Crown Point Historic Site. In the hawthorn trees, is a migrant trap for birds going north. There are little green worms in the leaves of the hawthorns, and the birds have learned this over the years. So, if the winds are right, and they don't just fly over us, they will stop in for a snack on their way north. Or, maybe they will live on-site for the summer, and we will catch them in our many mist nets and Potter traps (a four-compartment wire trap with a trip door on each compartment that will let you catch up to four birds at a time). The nets are up from daylight to dark each day, weather permitting. Visitors are welcome to visit the station and see what we do. Several school groups from the area, and some adult groups, will stop in to get a lesson in bird banding from Gor- don Howard. If we are catching, which doesn't always hap- Gar y Lee

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