5:00 am: Nets Up

As we march through wet grass on our way to put up nets, the shee-oo-e-lee shee-ee le-ee of a nearby meadowlark reminds us what we’re here to do. We begin work assembling ten nets in the study site, a soggy habitat born from the Little Popo Agie River.

The silky nets, typically about 12 meters wide and 3 meters tall, are fine and smooth to the touch—gentle on the birds and virtually invisible once spread out.

Every MAPS banding station focuses on songbirds that breed and raise their young in the vicinity of each banding site. The nets are distributed strategically to represent a good cross section of habitats and the birds that occupy them.

Though getting trapped in a net isn’t the best part of a songbird’s day, it generally doesn’t do any permanent damage if handled by a well-trained bander. And the individual identification process makes studies possible that go a long way toward the birds’ protection. Information on dispersal and migration, behavior and social structure, life-span and survival rate, reproductive success and population growth all get applied to landscape-level management plans.

Once the nets are up, we duck away. Now it’s time to wait.

Next: How to Measure a Life »

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