Avian Locations

18MAR2012 Sunday

The Golden-cheek Warblers are here now so this week I got to finish up flagging point count routes and get to work bird dogging. Bird dogging is what Doug calls chasing banded birds, taking avian locations, and trying to find nests. It’s difficult work, but what a fun challenge! I listen for the male GCWA to sing and then I head in his direction. He can usually be found at the top of a cedar elm, cedar ash, or juniper tree singing his head off. When I find him, I try to catch a glimpse of his color bands and get a GPS location. The point is to stick with him long enough so that his mate stops by and then I try to follow her to a nest that she’s building or built. That’s the harder part, since she doesn’t sing. If I’m lucky she makes chipping noises, but those can be confused with chipping noises of other females and… cardinals.

When I’m chasing a male the song can sound close enough to follow, but I end up running down a gulley and back up the other side, just to find that he bugs out the moment I get him in my sights and he flies back across the gulley. It’s hard to get a good reading on the bands right away for several reasons. The bands can be backlit, they can look similar to each other (Dark blue and black! Pink and orange! Green and dark green!), the birds legs can be tucked in to his body, tree branches can obscure my view, the bird can be moving too much or not at all. The birds aren’t dumb; they know I’m watching them and can get spooked. Or not. Depends on the bird and his mood. When they do fly away I hopefully see where they go, but I’ll hear them sing in a moment anyway. After the day in the field, I go back to the office and submit all my location data and in a week I’ll have an updated plot map. All of the points we submit get placed on the map as a symbol that represents the individual bird. In a short time we’ll have a good idea of each bird’s territory.