A Banding “Grand Slam” at the Bent of the River Audubon Center

The Bent of the River Audubon Heart isn’t any sports activities stadium, but it surely was however the positioning of an thrilling “grand slam” this 12 months—simply with birds, not baseballs. 

Throughout a single session, their licensed hen bander captured and banded every of their 4 focal species: a Prairie Warbler, a Subject Sparrow, a Blue-winged Warbler, and an Indigo Bunting. 

That is the primary time they’ve recorded all 4 in a single banding session, a win workers attribute to current intensive administration of the middle’s Cedar Fields.

Within the fall, their workforce eliminated bushes, saplings, and invasive vegetation from the realm to create wholesome early successional habitat for his or her focal species to nest in come spring. This administration work was knowledgeable by the middle’s common banding and territory mapping, which inform their workers which species are utilizing the early successional habitat, and the way.

It was extra intensive administration than they’d carried out in a number of years, and the outcomes had been almost instantaneous.

The variety of Prairie Warbler territories within the managed fields, for instance, jumped from 1 to five—a 400 per cent enhance that solely provides to the proof proven by a profitable season of hen banding!

Every focal species hen banded on the middle was launched with a random mixture of coloured “auxiliary” bands, along with the usual USGS aluminum band. The coloured bands assist workers determine particular person birds within the discipline with out having to seize them once more—together with the record-breaking 12-year-old Blue-winged Warbler that was re-sighted in 2025 and once more this spring.

As summer season winds down into autumn, workers will use this knowledge to tell their early successional habitat plans for the season. 

You’ll be able to add to this knowledge by conserving an eye fixed out for color-banded birds on the Bent and reporting any sightings—and the precise preparations and colours of the bands—to bentoftheriver@audubon.org! 

Please word: Hen banding is a extremely regulated scientific course of strictly performed by permitted professionals and Audubon’s biologists.