Early Saturday morning while the dew was still on the grass and many University students slept, renewable natural resources students captured and banded songbirds.
The group of wildlife management technique students trekked into the woods where mist nets, fine nylon nets resembling hair nets, were set up to capture songbirds and tag them with small, metal identification bands.
Michael Seymour, a non-game ornithologist for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, said bird banding serves several causes and allows for the Department to learn more about the life expectancy, productivity, survivorship and population sizes of different types of birds in the state.
Seymour set four nets up for the group Friday. They were strung across poles to catch birds who fly into the net. He said one of the drawbacks of mist nets is their 8-foot height, meaning some species of birds will simply fly over the
nets.
On the class’ first trip to check the nets, one net caught a hermit thrush, a songbird with a reddish tail and a brown body that lives close to the ground. Seymour demonstrated the procedure for taking the bird out of the net and bringing it to the banding station.
For each bird captured, the person banding it must record everything from its weight to the condition of its feathers and sex. A bird’s sex is hard to tell outside of mating season when most birds sexual organs swell much larger than their normal size, Seymour said.
Seymour measured the birds feathers and used them as a reference for the thrush’s age. He also checks bird for fat, visible through a bird’s skin. Some ornithologists examine a bird’s skull for ossification, or how much the skull has thickened over time, as an indicator for age, but Seymour said skull checks should only be a tool.
“The fat on a bird gives a rough idea of how they are doing healthwise,” Seymour said. “I used to work for the museum stuffing dead birds at LSU. Even when you’re scraping brains out, it’s hard to tell ossification.”
Holding the bird in both hands, Seymour blew on the bird’s chest to move the feathers and make the birds skin visible to check for fat under its skin as well as for sex organs, which were not visible because it was not mating season. Seymour then secured a band onto the 30-gram bird’s leg and recorded the number on the
band.
Conservation biology senior Jessica Waller, who had gone on other bird banding trips, said she was worried at first that she would hurt the birds while bird banding.
“I was afraid I was going to hurt them more than afraid that they would bite me,” Waller said. “They just kind of look at you and just relax. It’s not too bad.”
However, Waller didn’t have to band a bird Saturday because the class’ mist nets only caught one more bird after the first. The bird got its tongue stuck in the net, and so after it was untangled, it was released without
banding.
Instructor Luke Laborde said the hands-on activities are a given because the goal is to give them a taste of what it’s like to work as a biologist in the
field.
“We’re trying to get students as much exposure as we can as to how to properly handle the different types of animals,” Laborde said. “We’ve got an ongoing class project where we are banding mourning doves and white wing doves.”
Students in Laborde’s class said they liked working in nature and with animals.
“I did a few different things before this and I love this,” Waller said. “I feel like everyone in this loves it. It makes it that much more exciting to go to class and there’s so much more enthusiasm.”
Conservation biology junior Alexis Burress said she likes her choice of study because of the options she will have in research.
“I realized I wanted to study wildlife. There’s so many tracks here that are really research-oriented, but at the same time, if you want to work in a lab you can,” Burress said.
Laborde said part of working with wildlife is patience.
“You hope that you get your birds, but this really is not a bad lesson because you spend a lot of time in the field on these things,” Laborde said when the group checked the nets again only to find them empty. “Field work takes patience. It’s
good training.”
A group of LSU conservation biologist remove small debres in their net (hard to see) for bird netting at Wadill Wildlife Management Area in Baton Rouge earily Saturday morning October 25, 2014.
