Bird banding aims for understanding

Bri May jumps slightly as a somewhat large woodpecker inches closer to her hands. Slowly, she reaches out to the speckled bird and takes it gingerly in her hands before letting it fly back to its nest. May, as well as other children, were able to help band birds and rerelease them Saturday in the hopes of gaining a better understanding of the importance of the animal.

'I like birds and I like to let them go,” eight-year-old May said. 'It's fun.”

The Wickiup Hill Learning Center caught birds to band them, which is simply placing a band with a serial number around its foot. While banding birds is important in and of itself, the center wanted to open the activity to the public so they could experience getting to band birds as well.

'We want them to release the birds so they can see the learn the importance,” said Gail Barels, a conservation education specialist at the Wickiup Center. 'Hopefully in the future if the community is involved in whether trees get cut down or not, they'll say ‘Oh, but what about the birds?' They can remember that experience.”

Banding birds allows naturalists to look at the population of a variety of species, which is also an indicator of the larger issue of the state of their environment. Bob VanErsvelde, a certified bird bander, said this year has been a little more difficult for the birds because of the winter, but the banding day itself was a success. 'It changes year to year but this has been exceptional for banding,” he said. 'Migration may not be that good some years, but we're looking at long-term trends.Overall a lot of the birds are holding steady numbers.”

Mitch Hudson, an eleven-year-old Boy Scout with a Cedar Rapids troop, said he enjoyed getting to release a bird and that doing so may help others understand their greater importance in the environment.

'It feels good to let a birdie go freely,” he said. 'If you don't know about them, they might become extinct, and then there'd be a lot of bugs out there and other things birds eat.”