This spring’s landbird banding season marks the 48th year of banding, data collection and education programs at Manomet.
Our 50 mist nets, which opened on April 15, have been run on the same dates and in the same locations since the program started. This large, standardized dataset gives Manomet unparalleled comparisons of range expansions and contractions, yearly variation of migration and long term population change.
“Several species arrived earlier during the spring 2012 season than in past seasons, which is likely indicative of responses to climate change,” said Banding Director Trevor Lloyd-Evans. “It will be interesting to see how the spring 2013 season compares.”
Over the first few days of the season, the banders caught large numbers of White-throated Sparrows and Hermit Thrushes.
This season’s banding staff consists of Laura Koloski, Evan Dalton, Grace Alloy-Relihan and Mattie VandenBoom.
Koloski has been involved with Manomet since 2010. She worked as a researcher on a project assessing the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, was a member of the Arctic shorebird research team in 2012 and has worked at the banding lab during the fall season for the past two years. She returns to Manomet for her first spring banding season after spending the winter resighting and capturing Dunlin and Semipalmated Plovers on Cape Romain in South Carolina.
Dalton, a long-time Manomet bander, is currently completing his Master’s thesis on Wood Thrush nesting ecology at UMass Amherst.
Alloy-Relihan and VandenBoom both join the Manomet banding team for the first time this season. Alloy-Relihan was previously an intern at the Raptor Trust where she helped care for orphaned, sick, and injured birds.
VandenBoom has spent the past 12 years working as a bird bander at the Auburn Bird Banding Research Station in Auburn, Massachusetts. While working there, she participated in research that looks at the link between bird migration and the spread of Lyme disease.
“I am looking forward to handling a wide variety of birds this season,” VandenBoom said. “I am also excited to educate visitors and to help them connect with nature.”
To view summaries of past banding seasons and read about trends observed over Manomet’s 47 years of landbird banding, click here.
– Haley Jordan