Ultimately, the catbird and the other birds banded on the mall may add new details to the emerging portrait of bird migrations.
Between 1999-2004, DuVal captured 457 birds, banded them for identification, and took blood samples from their wing veins for DNA analysis.
The post-hurricane recapture of birds banded during Pre-Iris and the survivor composition of the post-hurricane community measure different phenomena.
To estimate the expected recapture rate in an undisturbed regime, we divided the Pre-Iris sample into two periods and compared the number of birds banded in the first half of the Pre-Iris sampling period that were recaptured in the second half of that period to the number of birds banded during Pre-Iris that were recaptured during Post-I.
To examine year-to-year recapture rates, we compared the recapture rate of individuals banded during a preliminary study in 1999 that were recaptured during 2001 (Pre-Iris and Post-I combined) with birds banded in 2001 (Pre-Iris and Post-I) that were recaptured during Post-II.
Among species with more than one individual banded during Pre-Iris, the following occurred: The highest Post-I recapture level of birds banded during Pre-Iris was 83% (Thamnophilus doliatus), and none of the ten species with the highest levels were open-habitat species (Table S1).
Since breeding pairs and unmated males were intensively banded in 2006, banded birds could be classified as after second year (ASY birds in at least their second breeding season, while unmarked birds or birds banded as nestlings in the previous year were classified as SY birds hatched the previous year and in their first breeding season.
Çağan had heard back about the first bird banded at Aras, a song thrush.
One such bird, banded as a chick at Kerguelen Island in the southern Indian Ocean and recovered at Patache, Chile, travelled in less than 10 months at least 13,000 kilometres (8,100 miles)—perhaps as much as 18,000 kilometres (11,200 miles)—by drifting with the prevailing winds.
Halfway across the Pacific Ocean on Midway Island, I recently contemplated these weighty questions in the presence of a Laysan albatross known as Wisdom, a bird banded with an ID tag in the 1950s and at the moment serenely warming her most recent egg.
