Colour banding chickadees at the Hilliardton marsh

 

Blue banded black capped chickadee what does blue mean? Read on !

Years ago we were doing a special project for Kevin Hannah of the Canadian Wildlife Service. We had been asked to collect feathers from Common redpolls and pine and evening grosbeaks . Collecting feathers was to help with an isotope study they were doing  which allowed  from the particular isotope signature where the birds had been hatched. In addition to collecting the feather we placed a colour band on each birds leg as well as the numeric Canadian wildlife service band When we had visitors to the marsh they became very excited when they spied a colour band on a bird which lead us to start the colour banding project for chickadees at the marsh. 
     Chickadees for the most part are not migratory and besides dispersing for the breeding season they are very dedicated to feeders in the winter returning year after year. Every year for the past 6 years we have been putting a colour band on chickadees in addition to the metal Canadian wildlife Service band. The colour of the band signifies the year it was banded . 2021 is yellow, 2020 is green 2019 is white  going back to 2014 which is dark blue . When we started the project in 2017 we put colour bands on birds of known ages prior to 2017 allowing us to have coloured bands for birds  back to 2009 although the chance of seeing one of those birds is very remote. The age record for a banded black capped chickadee is  11 years 6 months and was originally banded in Minnesota May 5th 2002. You never know what the future may hold for one of these banded birds at the marsh.

Red is 2017

    The main advantage of having a colour banded bird is that it does not have to be recaptured to know the age o f the bird and visitors at the marsh take great delight in seeing flocks of  birds with different colour bands showing that the birds  are in social groups of different age classes. Colour banding birds gives us another layer of detail in encouraging the study of birds. Many researchers use a combination of  several different colour bands to allow them to identify individual birds  by sight. Our purpose was  to identify the ages of birds by sight and to get our visitors excited about continued chickadee research at the marsh.  

Recently we recaptured a bird with a blue band  another with a brown band and another with a red band 

Blue           Originally banded  October 28th 2014, interesting this bird was not recaptured at all in 2016 or 2019 but all of the other years. It is currently our oldest chickadee to date and   was  aged  as a hatching year bird when it was banded making it over 6 years in age 

Brown           Originally banded  Aug 14th 2015  banded as a hatching year bird and a little over 5 years  now.

Red   Originally banded August 17th 2017 as a hatching year bird  It has been recaptured 9 times since it was originally banded.

I mentioned in my last blog that we are also banding chickadees at the north end of the marsh and will continue doing that moving into the future as these birds were all unbanded revealing that it is a different flock then the birds using the south end of the marsh. it would be very interesting if one of these birds or any of the "marsh" birds might show up at someone's feeder in the area. If that is the case I certainly would like to hear about it. The colour band might draw more attention so hopefully i will be reporting some sightings in the future.

In 2018 one of our orange banded birds showed up in Allison Ontario unfortunately hitting a window. Every now and then chickadees seem to migrate. Technically these are called irruptions  and do not seem to happen in  regular cycle . We have noticed that we do not have many chickadees lingering with orange bands and feel it is perhaps because they wandered  far away from the marsh.

yellow means 2021

There is lots to learn about chickadees at the marsh and we are excited to have the opportunity to colour band them and share the information with our visitors.  Naturally I am urging that blue  banded chickadee to keep enjoying the sunflower seeds at the marsh feeders for another 5 years so we can perhaps set a new longevity record for chickadees .