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The Secret Life of the Kirtland’s WarblerPage 2
The discovery sent waves of excitement rippling through the birding community, and the buzz intensified as additional birders visited the site and saw or heard more warblers. By the end of April that year, at least eight had been found. The total exceeded the number of documented sightings in the entire Bahamas over the previous 50 years. When word of the sightings got out, I wasn’t one of the lucky few who immediately hurried to Eleuthera, but research wildlife biologist Joe Wunderle was. He flew over from Andros, where he had been working on the newly established Kirtland’s Warbler Research and Training Project. According to Conservancy scientist Dave Ewert, the project seeks to train Bahamian biologists and to strengthen local capacity to monitor, manage and protect natural areas that sustain resident and migrant birds, including the Kirtland’s warbler. Wunderle, Ewert and British ornithologist David Currie, the project’s field director, are accomplishing those goals by teaching bird-survey techniques to associate-degree graduates of the College of the Bahamas, who are recruited for the project by Eric Carey of the Bahamas National Trust. The students learn to identify, capture and band birds. The project also provides opportunities for them to further their educations at universities in the United States. Wunderle, the project’s lead scientist and researcher, was able to capture six of the warblers seen on Eleuthera. He gave each a colored plastic leg band and a numbered metal band and released the birds unharmed. Then, in the fall of 2002, he returned to the island to see if the banded birds had come back. When five of the six turned up in the same area, he knew he was onto something, and the research and training project moved from Andros to Eleuthera. In the months that followed, Wunderle, Currie, Ewert and their student assistants discovered some 30 Kirtland’s warblers, an unprecedented number, at a dozen more locations. Some of the sites hosted several individuals; one held at least 15 color-banded warblers as well as several more without bands. To learn when it was banded, he needed to know which colors were on which leg. Because the bands were too badly faded to tell, he captured the bird, read the numbers imprinted on its metal band and e-mailed them to colleagues in Michigan. They wrote back with three pieces of exciting news: that the plastic bands were originally purple, green and orange; that the bird, a male, had been captured sometime after its first year of life, not the year it hatched; and that it wasn’t young—it had been banded in 1995. It was a survivor, an experienced migrant, a living, breathing link between summer up there and winter down here. At least 7 years old, it had already made at least seven round trips between Michigan and the Bahamas. The 1,500-mile-long first leg of what was believed to be its eighth trip had brought it to Eleuthera that fall. In its lifetime it had flown approximately 22,500 miles, about enough to reach all the way around the world. It seemed too much to expect that the bird—called PXGO because of its purple (P), metal (X), green (G) and orange (O) bands—might be found the following winter, but when Wunderle and Currie resumed work in the winter of 2003-2004, there it was, none the worse for wear. Its new orange leg band, a gift from Wunderle the previous winter, was still gleaming. And then, incredibly, the bird turned up again in the winter of 2004-2005. It was the first Kirtland’s warbler to be banded in Michigan and then spotted in the Bahamas, and it had been found three times. << Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next >> |
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