EGREMONT — At a makeshift station tucked right into a marshy woodland at Jug End State Reservation, a crew of researchers are there at dawn and dealing quick.
They’ve obtained to take care of a passel of migrating birds whereas, one after the other, they wrap an almost weightless aluminum identification ring round one of many hen’s legs earlier than releasing it.
On Tuesday morning, on the peak of hen migration to the tropics, these banding specialists and avian ecologists with the Berkshire Bird Observatory are additionally taking fast measurements of wings, checking fats ranges below chest feathers, and analyzing numerous markings.
They wish to know every hen’s intercourse and age. Is it an grownup? Sometimes tailfeathers give it away. Other occasions they need to blow the top feathers again to see how totally fashioned the cranium is.
Weight? Carefully place the hen head first in an open-ended tube and onto the size it goes — tail up.
They admire the birds whereas they work, holding their ft between fingers, and sworn to the ethics code of, “birds first — data second.” They aren’t simply scientists — they’re passionate hen lovers.
“We’re always looking for signs of stress,” mentioned Ben Nickley, the observatory’s founder and director, as he measured a wing.
Tuesday’s catch: 60 birds from 17 completely different species. These included 4 American redstarts, a black-and-white warbler, a handful of ruby-crowned kinglets, an ovenbird, one ruby-throated hummingbird, one veery and 12 Swainson’s thrush.
All the info will get logged for submission to the state in addition to to the federal authorities’s Bird Banding Laboratory to be used by different scientists and researchers. After every hen is measured, it goes on about its business of fattening up right here within the Berkshires on its means south. The band will assist scientists be taught extra concerning the hen’s patterns sooner or later.
This hen observatory is the one such state and federally permitted banding and knowledge assortment station proper now on this a part of the area. It can also be working to extend populations of the American kestrel, a falcon, with its American Kestrel Nest Box Project, and is at all times in search of individuals who have pasture-like habitat to host the containers. The 70 % decline in kestrels has alarmed and mystified scientists.
The observatory is one wing of ecology nonprofit Green Berkshires‘ numerous initiatives, however it is going to quickly set out by itself with the continuing assist of Green Berkshires President Eleanor Tillinghast, Nickley mentioned.
Nickley’s aim is to determine a everlasting hen observatory that can mix conservation science and schooling with group engagement. The observatory’s Instagram page already has 10,000 followers.
The researchers wish to join individuals with birds by means of shut direct expertise.
“A bird in the hand — it makes people care,” Nickley says, including that the group welcomes guests and volunteers. Classes from quite a lot of schools within the space have already come out to observe the crew work.
That work contributes to the broader physique of scientific knowledge.
“A lot of our bird populations are actually declining,” Nickley mentioned. “And how do we know that? From people that are out in the woods collecting data like us.”
The shifting timing of hen migration can reveal a lot. Already this yr they’ve seen many birds which might be migrating late — birds that Nickley mentioned have been flagged as uncommon on birding web site, eBird.
Jug End is the right place for fueling up for a 100- to 200-mile flight, Nickley mentioned, and that is serving to the observatory get knowledge that “would otherwise be very hard to get.”
The getting alone takes coaching and expertise. Nickley and two different specialists, Rowan Coltey-Reeves and Anna Peel, rapidly put up 15 clear “mist nets,” in strategic areas early within the morning, then take away them on the finish of every six-hour session.
They proceed making “web runs” to gather the birds all through the session, place them into cotton baggage made by volunteers and rapidly return to the station. Mist nets are thought-about the most secure method to catch birds for research.
It’s all accomplished to keep away from stress to the hen. Peel demonstrates the “body first” extraction technique now favored over the decades-old “feet first” technique that she mentioned might contain a wrestle throughout elimination from the online.
Nickley says they take away the smaller birds first “because they can get cold fast.”
They then dangle the baggage on a line with a clothespin till the crew are able to band and look at each at their work desk.
And they’re thrilled after they see fats retailer on a hen’s chest. It seems as a yellow-ish substance, and it is what they should carry them the space. The researchers are additionally fascinated about what occurs to them after they go away Jug End.
They want a wholesome hall for his or her migration, Coltey-Reeves mentioned. “They want little locations to cease the entire means, and we have to shield their habitat in all places.”
