[birdky] banding and bird deaths
- From: Steve Stedman <SSTEDMAN@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: BIRDKY@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2002 09:50:49 -0600 (CST)
To have a bird die in your hands while you are trying
to band it is a traumatic experience for the bander,
at least when it first happens, and is, of course,
more drastic still for the bird. I recall the first
time I banded Purple Finches that two of the first
ten I captured died in my hands, and I almost quit
banding them as a result. However, I perservered
and banded over 1500 additional Purple Finches over
the next decade without incident. Some of the birds
I banded were recovered in states far distant from
Tennessee, adding a bit to our knowledge of the species'
migration habits.
I understand the concern of those who feel that any
bird death is too much to risk in order to gain
knowledge about a species by banding many members
of its population. But I also know from firsthand
experience that the number of birds that die as a
result of banding is very low, and, statistically,
an insignificant part of the annual mortality that
most bird species undergo. For instance, I recently
read an account of Great Blue Heron that indicated
that 79% of first-years birds died in their first year
of life (with mortality near 20% each year thereafter).
And mortality rates for first-year birds and adults
is greater still for many species of smaller birds.
If we think of bird mortality as if it mirrored
human mortality rates, which are comparatively
much lower than those of most birds, we will be
comparing apples and oranges. This is not to
say that bird deaths caused by humans are not
important; they are, but in the grand scheme
of things banding-related bird deaths are very
small. Better to worry about the millions of
birds killed each year by free-roaming cats
in North America alone, or the 5 million (this
figure seems way low to me, but it is the one
that I hear most often) killed each year by
collisions with towers, or the untold numbers
that die by collisions with windows in private
homes, businesses, etc. Those who direct their
ire against banders have much larger targets
of opportunity to direct that ire against if
they truly want to make a difference in the
mortality suffered by birds at the hands of
humans.
Steve Stedman
Cookeville, TN
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