Subject: [Tweeters] Bird Banding - debate continues
Date: Apr 7 18:28:26 2012
From: Dennis Paulson - dennispaulson at comcast.net


Don,

You obviously have an agenda here, as you have received a load of negative feedback and still persist. it's probable that not many minds will be changed in one direction or another, as I wrote earlier, but I do find fault with the "facts" you toss around loosely. As a museum person, I felt obligated to respond to this one quote, as I know few people on tweeters will be able to assess it. Your statements are as extreme as any I have read on tweeters, and I feel the need to respond for the many people (bird banders and all biologists, as nearly as I can tell) who your statements defame.

I spent time with John Williams in Kenya, also years ago when he was the ornithologist at the Coryndon Museum in Nairobi, and I find it hard to believe he would have said that, as it is not true. I have not skinned thousands of birds caught in mist nets but certainly many dozens, and I have never seen such a net-pattern bruise. Small passerines are very light in weight, and there is no way they would have the momentum to do that to themselves by flying into a mist net at their normal speed. And the bigger the bird, the tougher it is.

If birds were subject to injuries in that way, baby Wood Ducks wouldn't have evolved to jump out of trees and baby murres to jump off cliffs. They would surely be bruising their little bodies for life if the quote were true. Very rarely a bird will fly into a mist net in a way that injures it, and responsible netters, the vast majority, are very upset by this. Avian mortality from netting and banding is entirely inconsequential in comparison with the ways we as a species kill birds, and I'm sure you know them as well as I do. Driving, having windows on our houses, stringing up utility wires, letting our cats roam outside, producing plastic garbage that is ingested by seabirds when it goes to sea. Why aren't you railing against the really significant sources of bird mortality? If you do any of the things in the previous sentence, I would guess your actions have killed more birds than is done by the average bander in his or her lifetime.

Anyone else on tweeters who has prepared bird specimens might respond here as well. I would be interested in knowing the identity of the website from which you got this quote, just to see who else is out there trying to discredit one of our more valuable methods of learning about birds.

Dennis Paulson
Seattle


On Apr 6, 2012, at 6:19 PM, Don Wallace wrote:

> Here is a quote from a website.
>
> I have always thought is odd that biologists have been and are given a free pass. Years ago I met--at Jamaica Bay WR, Queens, NY-- John G. Williams, curator or ornithology at the British Museum in Nairobi, and author or co-author of "The Birds of East Africa." Anyway, he shared the following with me: "I have skinned thousands of birds caught in mist nets. Every single one of them, from tiny passerines to large raptors, had bruises on their breasts that matched the pattern of the net that they struck at high speed." A small percentage of birds caught in mist nets die upon impact and still others perish or are injured while being removed or afterwards.
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