Hi Bill B & Tweeters:
Andrea W sent this interesting msg to Tweeters awhile ago. Good info in it about how
to report banded birds like the Wht-crnd. Sparrow at the fill.
Yours, Carol Schulz
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrea Wuenschel" <chyroptera at yahoo.com>
To: "Tweeters" <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 7:23 PM
Subject: [Tweeters] How to report color-banded birds online to the BirdBanding Lab


Anytime you see a color-banded bird or color-marked
bird, in addition to posting the sighting to Tweeters,
you are encouraged to report it on the USGS Bird
Banding Lab's website:

http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbl/
Click on "Report A Color-Marked Bird" to fill out the
online form.

This way the Bird Banding Lab can contact the
researchers with your sighting, and the data will be
saved in the Bird Banding Lab's national database.

Examples of color-marked birds to report:

-A band on a leg you can read from a distance like the
Brant recently reported to Tweeters with "6KN" on its
legband. Raptors are also often banded with similar
bands.

-Geese and swans with neck collars with letters or
numbers on them.

-Birds with two color-bands on each leg, but no
numbers or letters. Often shorebird and songbird
studies use these bands, like the UW Song Sparrow
study in Discovery Park and the color-banded crows on
the UW campus.

-Birds with feathers that have been dyed with a
colorful spot; usually shorebirds or swans. Recently
on Tweeters, there was a post asking for sightings of
sandpipers with blue dye on them.

Your sightings are very important to the researchers,
and by reporting the color-marked birds online to the
Bird Banding Laboratory, you are making important
contributions to the projects!

Andrea Wuenschel
North Seattle