For the past four years, I’ve helped bird-band in a national MAPS or Monitoring Avian Populations Survey. Below are some notes from my experience….
For most of the morning, my job is to check the nets and untangle birds. Each net is strung between two poles, thirty-six feet long and nine feet tall, with the bottom of the net high enough so a bird won’t dangle and rest on the ground. Some nets are in shady underbrush, others in dappled light near the riverbank. The birds fly into the mesh, entangling their wings, head, and feet. They stay trapped until a net-runner comes to disentangle them and slip them in a cloth bag. If the bird has an obvious brood patch, the net-runner will put a red clothespin on the bag, indicating that this is a parent taking care of its young and should get priority over other birds. If there are more birds than bird-banders, the cloth bags are hung on a clothesline near the banding table where they wiggle and shake impatiently. Each bird in turn will be taken out of the bag in the “bander’s grip,” its back cupped in the palm of the hand and its head held firmly between second and third finger. Using something like pliers, the bander puts a band around the bird’s leg and notes its species, age, sex, weight, wing length, appearance of breeding patch or cloacae protuberance (where sperm is stored), molting pattern on the wings, and unusual details such as injury or disease. Two tail feathers are pulled out for an isotope study. Swabs are taken for an avian flu study. Ideally, this should all take less than fifty minutes from the time of entanglement to release, so as not to unduly stress the bird. Nets are checked every twenty minutes.
For me, untangling a bird is not easy. It requires a mental effort somewhat like a dyslexic trying to read. There is a spatial understanding I am supposed to have—from which direction the warbler flew into the net, how it half-bounced out, how it thrashed and fought and turned itself around, which wing got caught, and which shoulder--and from this I am supposed to intuit whether to free the head first or the feet. There is a physical confidence I am supposed to have, pulling firmly at impossibly-thin legs and trusting they will not snap off, feeling the rapidly-beating heart and trusting it will not stop. As my fingers search for invisible strands of nylon tangled in tail feathers or balled around toes, my mind should know what will happen when I move these strands down or up. Meanwhile the bird has its own opinion. Maybe it is not as hard as quantum physics. But it requires a meshing of my mind and body, those two seemingly separate modes. It requires skills I rarely use and have not much cultivated. Untangling a bird from a net makes me feel anxious and triumphant and weirdly centered—as though the coordination of these two separate modes is really, after all, what I am supposed to be doing.
I concentrate. I pull a few strands. And the Yellow Warbler is free, held firmly in my bander’s grip. Here in my hand, the color of this bird rings like a carillon. This color could power a nuclear reactor, containing all the energy we would ever need in the world.
That Sunday morning, July 10, we hardly catch anything. A Yellow Warbler, a Lucy’s Warbler, two Red-winged Blackbirds, a Brown-crested Flycatcher, and two Brown-headed Cowbirds. We recapture a Lucy’s Warbler and Blue Grosbeak. We complain about the mosquitoes at Net Nine and count our bites. In birder-language, fondle list refers to those birds that someone has personally handled as a bander. We talk about our fondle list. We don’t have much else to do but talk, and then Sarah does an imitation. She hops and stops and hops and stops and we must guess. Finally, someone says robin. Next Carol does a credible wren. Peter follows with a pigeon. He has all the moves, the back-and-forth neck, the puffing breast. Carol counters with a towhee, jerky, robotic, a little scary. Most of us are laughing quite hard by now at the comedy of someone so large trying to act like 15 ounces. The human body just looks silly hunting for worms.
On July 16, we have a little more luck, banding three Lesser Goldfinches, a Bewick’s Wren, two Bridled Titmouses, a Black-headed Grosbeak, two Hairy Woodpeckers, a Blue Grosbeak, two Ash-throated Flycatchers, a House Finch, and a Lazuli Bunting. We recapture a Blue Grosbeak.
My personal prize is the male Hairy Woodpecker, which I disentangle from Net Three while holding my breath and thinking good thoughts. Woodpeckers, of course, are always personable with their erect stance, thoughtful probing, and energetic tapping like a very good carpenter going about the business of fixing up your house—fixing up the world. Tap, tap, tap. The Hairy Woodpecker has a white breast, a masked face, black and white patterned wings, and a red cap. The males incubate the eggs at night, the females in the day. My Hairy Woodpecker angles his head, tries to peck me, and looks annoyed at the interruption. He has work to do.
The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper and render them more important.
Posted by: Kaylee Amateur | April 29, 2011 at 08:01 PM