JEFFERSON COUNTY —As the tiny Lincoln’s sparrow clamped onto her finger with its beak, ornithologist Meredith McBurney told her audience it didn’t hurt.
“Woodpeckers hurt,” she said, getting a laugh from the small group of seniors from Brookdale Parkplace senior living facility in Denver. “They know where it hurts the most.”
The Brookdale residents are one of many private and school groups that are going to be visiting the
Nature Center near Waterton Canyon for “bird banding month” to see a variety of bird species banded for tracking purposes.
McBurney, a bird researcher with the , has partnered with the Audubon Society and will be on site every day to band birds that are caught in nets set up around the nature center.
“This is a partnership,” McBurney said. “We’ve been doing it since the program started here in 2002.”
outreach coordinator Kate Hogan said she’s been booking home-school and public groups to come out early, between 7:30 and 9 a.m., with public school groups coming after.
McBurney and an assistant put a band on the bird’s leg. She then weighs it, checks for fat, determines the bird’s sex, if possible, and sends it on its way.
Hogan said this is the best time to band birds because of migration patterns.
“Chatfield is basically the ideal habitat for migrating birds because of the different vegetation and water, which equates to food,” Hogan said.
Hogan said she’d like to offer more events surrounding bird banding in the future and hopes to hire part-time staff next year.
“It takes all of our manpower just to have the station open to the public and the nature center, so we don’t offer additional programs,” she said.
McBurney has been banding birds since 1997 and said it can yield a lot of information, such as the number of species in an area, migration patterns and the general health of a particular species.
Last year, she banded just over 500 birds, a modest year, considering she has done more than 800 as recently as 2009. McBurney acknowledged that she never knows how many birds to expect because of all the variables. Some birds, she said, she’ll never catch because they fly too high to be caught in the nets.
“Some years things go wrong and there simply aren’t as many birds coming back,” she said.
On April 29, McBurney and the Audubon Society hosted the Brookdale Parkplace seniors, who took a van down to the banding station and watched while McBurney and her assistant, 12-year-old Santi Erices, banded three birds. McBurney described what she was doing and then let a member from the audience release it back into the air.
Bob Towler briefly held a house wren before it turned over in his hand and flew away.
“That was neat,” Towler said, noting the lightness of the bird. “It was almost imperceptible. If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have known it was there.”
Joe Vaccarelli: 303-954-2396, jvaccarelli@denverpost.com or twitter.com/joe_vacc
Bird banding at nature center
Where: Audubon Society of Greater Denver Nature Center, 11280 S. Waterton Road, Jefferson County
When: 7:30-11 a.m.weekends through May 31 (except May 9)
Mother’s Day Bird Banding Breakfast
Where: Audubon Society of Greater Denver Nature Center
When: 9-11 a.m. Sunday
Cost: $16 for adults, $8 for children; mothers eat free
