This place had no competition from street lamps and other houses. All light came from a star-studded sky with the Milky Way’s band of shimmering stardust sweeping the heavens.
There was something else in this rare setting, however, which made the night unusually special. Fanned out, thousands of feet above me, in great sweeping V’s were tundra swans migrating south. Their beautiful calls pierced the silent darkness with haunting melody.
Much of fall migration is silent and it was a rare treat to hear one of the few species of birds that constantly communicates as they journey. It remains a lasting echo in my memory.
Each of us have stories about our personal experiences with the fall and spring journeys of migrating birds. And no wonder, since scientists believe that at the very least five billion birds migrate annually, their routes so overlapping and intertwined that it would baffle any mapmaker attempting to develop a compressive map of migration.
Fall migration is here. Migratory birds are in restless preparation for their long journey, or have already taken flight. Over the past several weeks their appetites have turned ferocious and they have grown plump.
As daylight hours shorten, hormonal changes occur in birds, increasing appetite and allowing more body fat to be stored. When the wind, weather conditions and time are right they will take wing, using several cues to successfully navigate their way back to winter homes. Scientists believe birds employ stars, the sun, wind direction, landmarks, the earth’s magnetic field and even odors to successfully complete their journey.
Many smaller birds like warblers, thrushes, sparrows and flycatchers travel at night, stopping each day to forage and rest. What is wonderful for us is that with the changing of our seasons we have an opportunity to see birds passing through that neither summer nor winter here.
Here in the Sandhills many of our encounters with migration are with songbirds and other neo-tropical migrants (birds that travel between North and South America and the Caribbean).
What birds consistently travel through the Sandhills region during migration? The folks at Weymouth Woods are trying to find out what species of birds you might expect to see if you visit their park, through a banding program that has been conducted each spring and fall for the last three years.
Through this effort they hope to learn about their resident birds as well as more about which migrants use Weymouth as a rest stop. Recently I tagged along with Susan Campbell, from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, to see what banding birds entailed. Susan, a certified bander, is heading up the banding program at Weymouth.
“One important goal,” she explained, “is to be able to recover birds that are already banded, for each recaptured bird helps to unravel the mystery of where these birds nest, spend the winter and what route they travel in between.”
I started my trek to join her small group of banders just after dawn had broken on a warm misty September day. The half-mile stroll seemed almost silent, little stirred but the sand and pine needles beneath my feet. When I reached Pine Island Trail, where the banding would be taking place, I found that a team of three had already placed nets and were making their first rounds to check for captures.
They had placed a total of 12 “mist nets,” each about eight feet high and 20 feet long. Mist netting is very fine black netting, the squares about ˝ inch by ˝ inch.
The first round of checks brought no birds captured, so we returned to a shelter along the trail where a banding station had been set up. There was a curious array of supplies there: a clothesline complete with clothespins, a tackle box containing plastic film canisters that held different sizes of tiny aluminum bands, crimping tools, and a weight gage that looked much like a large ink pen.
There was also a special measuring rule, several different sizes of lightweight white cotton bags with drawstrings, a container of water with an eyedropper, and a small library of books, one of them quite weighty. It became evident that there was more information collected, when birds are captured for banding, than I expected.
Nets are checked every 30 minutes and the next round of checking brought the first two customers of the day, both were resident cardinals, snagged in the same net and one had a band. They were gently removed from the netting and each placed in a cotton bag. One bag was clipped to the clothesline (this turns out to be the bird waiting room), while Susan went to work on the first bird.
Each bird is weighed, the bag clipped to the pen-like gage (the weight of the empty bag later subtracted). They are then measured with the rule and analyzed for health and how much fat they have stored.
Plumage, feather condition, bill, eye color and the condition of the skull all help to determine the age and sex of the bird. That weighty book I noticed has a detailed analysis of each species of North American birds, and is constantly referred to during the detailed analysis of a captured bird.
Finally, the proper sized band is selected and the special crimping tool used to both open and gently secure the band around the bird’s ankle. No matter how small the band, each has a different combination of numbers that will be registered in a international database so that if this bird is recaptured, for instance in Canada, information can be added to its personal history.
The container of water and eyedropper are used to keep each bird hydrated—a thirsty bird will eagerly accept the bit of water. All this work is done quickly and efficiently, and the bird released so the next customer can be processed.
Among the many birds Susan and her team have banded this fall are a rose-breasted grosbeak, scarlet tanagers, wood thrushes, ovenbirds, black-throated blue warblers, magnolia warblers and American redstarts. They have also recaptured birds during their years of banding work at Weymouth. One example Susan gave me was a northern waterthrush that had been banded the previous spring in Maryland.
In the last ten years songbirds have declined 32 percent in North Carolina and it is much worse in other states. Check this web site for state-by-state percentages http://www.audubonpopulation.org/newpop2/pages/facts/poproost.htm. Because these birds travel such huge distances, need shelter when they stop to rest, and have different food requirements, attempts to help migrating birds recover their numbers is complicated.
Where once scientists thought that saving breeding areas would stem this decline, we now know that we must also save wintering grounds and stopover places between the two.
In the last few weeks, some of these small travelers have been in my wooded backyard. I have seen both blue-winged and magnolia warblers, an ovenbird, and gray-cheeked and Swainson’s thrushes, all busy scratching around for insects, plucking berries, or raiding my feeders.
There are many things you can do, while preparing your garden for winter, which will help migrating and winter birds. Use seed and suet feeders to attract them to your yard. Leave faded summer flowers such as marigolds, zinnias and cosmos–their seeds provide important nutrition for hungry birds passing through. Plant shrubs or build a brush pile to create a south-facing windbreak for protection Plant native shrubs and trees, such as dogwood and holly, which produce nuts and berries just as migrating birds are traveling through and need their nourishment.
Then all that is left to do is to take a bit of time to visit Weymouth Woods during fall and spring migration, or just patiently sit by your window and enjoy the diversity of your passing visitors.
Judy Jessop can be contacted through the Sandhills office of the Nature Conservancy at 246-0300.
