Tags: bird banding

At five o’clock in the morning, a team of researchers enter Freshkills Park, passing flare stations and winding through the roads that border the park’s rolling hills to get to their workstation. The sun is just beginning to break as they unfurl their mist nets in an opening in a stand of trees and set up a table with tiny metal bands, clamps, clipboards, scales, rulers, and pencils.

Researchers from the College of Staten Island are operating a bird banding station at Freshkills Park for the second consecutive summer. The project is led by Dr. Lisa Manne and Dr. Dick Veit. In 2016, they banded over 20 species of birds, including orchard orioles, hairy woodpeckers, and yellow warblers.

This summer, researchers from the College of Staten Island operated the first bird banding station at Freshkills Park. The banding station was part of The Institute for Bird Populations’ MAPS: Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship program, which has been in existence since 1989.