The Unlucky Bird

Western Sandpiper with a tag that looks really uncomfortable.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/tc202/109108366​95/

Beautiful capture. That tag does look quite uncomfortable. Seems it has been tagged twice.

Thanks.

Damn shame really, very nice shot!

Seems like a really dumb spot for a tag right on a joint like that.

It looks like there is also one on the right side at least its the same color in the blur. Nice shot though

Yep, there were two Western Sandpipers tagged. I didn't see any other birds though. I felt sad for the bird because someone put this huge tag awkwardly placed on his leg. Maybe he will be lucky and the tag will somehow come off.

Very nice capture!
I certainly agree with you.
I hope whoever tagged that bird gets a hellacious hangnail that won’t go away.

Whenever someone mentions tagging being a negative impact towards a bird, I always like to point out two things. One, the bird is alive, and two, there are thousands of birds around the world that have been tagged and recaptured year after year. These birds have no obvious signs that the tags have impacted their ability to survive. If you would like to look at some of this data you can go on the Cornell website, or the USGS website.

This bird has a very lightweight tag(far less than an ounce) placed above the knee joint. The location of this tag is optimally placed for the bird, and for the observer. When the bird is in flight, the location of the tag allows for the perfect tucking of the legs into the under feathers of the belly. If the tag was to be placed on the ankle, it would cause drag since it would stick out of the down. Tags are used for distant observation, and are always color coded to inform the observer of the location of the original capture. Tags are only ever placed on adult birds (tags can be applied to the chicks of large bird species). It is very likely that this bird was capture on breeding grounds via net cannon along with dozens of other tagged shorebirds.

The band on the ankle has the same information as the tag, and works as a backup in case the tag falls off. More importantly, the band provides additional information if the bird is recapture. Original capture date, location, and nesting grounds are often placed on these bands. Bands can be placed on chicks, and the bird will have it on their leg for the rest of their life. Both the bands and the tags are incredibly light, and if you had one in your hand you would not be able to notice it. If you would like to help out the ornithologist who track these bird's migrations, or find out where a bird has been, you can report any type of bird band or tag you find by going to www.reportband.gov

It happens quite a bit on this forum, but we have to be careful not to be too anthropomorphic towards birds. Maybe it is just the lack of knowledge about them and the practice of banding.

I hope this helps some people ,

Evan

Don't want to hijack a fine post in many ways but Evan, to continue in an anthropomorphic way, Let's see you have a band, to scale, put above your knee or on your ankle, after you have been trapped in a net, which is just the start of banding, for the rest of your life that always bothers you and there is nothing you can do about it. Banding has gotten completely out of control and needs to be much more restricted, enough already. Imagine trying to sleep with a band every night. Give it a try if it is not such a big deal
Many posts here and elsewhere should prove that birds at the least are far more intelligent than just a stupid bird, their social lives are quite complex. I do not see the banding side that a band does not cause much harm, look at your statistics of how many birds are killed every year in the banding process.

I understand that there is good to come from tagging. But there are ways to do it without hindering the comfort of the bird. The placement of that tag above the knee like that is idiotic.

Oldjackssparrows wrote in post #16465845
Don't want to hijack a fine post in many ways but Evan, to continue in an anthropomorphic way, Let's see you have a band, to scale, put above your knee or on your ankle, after you have been trapped in a net, which is just the start of banding, for the rest of your life that always bothers you and there is nothing you can do about it. Banding has gotten completely out of control and needs to be much more restricted, enough already. Imagine trying to sleep with a band every night. Give it a try if it is not such a big deal
Many posts here and elsewhere should prove that birds at the least are far more intelligent than just a stupid bird, their social lives are quite complex. I do not see the banding side that a band does not cause much harm, look at your statistics of how many birds are killed every year in the banding process.

With the exception of extremely endangered bird species that have less than a hundred individuals alive, banding occurs to less than a tenth of a percent of an entire population. Is that out of control? Banding is extremely regulated in the number of birds that researchers can come in contract with. I have participated in banding dozens of times. To the naive person, you would think that these large bands and the banding process would cause unneeded stress to the bird. In very rare circumstances they do. However, from my experience with these banding operations, run by licensed ornithologists and USFW/USGS employees, the birds encounter very little to no stress. The vast majority of the time the total time that the bird was handled or capture is under two minutes. And the bird is back to feeding the second they are released. So next time you find a banded bird in the wild, please take the time to set aside the anthropomorphic thoughts and actually look at the behavior of the bird. Chances are you will see no behavioral difference from the non-banded birds next to it. I have looked at the fatality rate after capture and banding before, and it was even smaller than I previously thought , within a half percent of all capture small birds, and a fraction of a percent for larger birds (who can also have wing bands).

The banding of raptors has been a large controversy over on the West Coast and in the Mid-West. Purely because these birds are high profile, and lovable species, they get more attention. However, the banding of the major raptors like the Red-tailed Hawk has been extremely necessary for their protection against wind turbines. Wind turbines kill a large amount of raptors during the course of migration. What the tagging of the raptors has done, is provide extremely detailed reports of migration routes. These reports have lead to the correction in new wind turbine sites so that they are out of raptor migration paths.

Before presuming that banding is a horrible practice that should be stopped, I suggest that you contact your local Audubon society and ask about bird banding field trips with the local ornithologist or USFW employee. These trips are highly educational in banding practices and are offered all over the U.S., purely for the purpose of educating the public. Please participate in these events before condemning their actions.

Have you considered that the placement of bird bands has been studied to death? The placement of the tag is in the optimal location for the bird. What would be the point of banding any bird for it to only die before you could gather any information? For a bird with such a small size as a shorebird, there are only a limited amount of locations that you can place a tag or band. If you have any suggestions on how to mark a bird this small without hindering the comfort of the bird, being better than these locations, then I think you should contact your local bird banders and inform them, because it would be greatly appreciated.

Nice pictures,,i think that banding is OK,,but that one is not in the right place,,it already had one?couldn,t infro from that one been relayed, and no need for a secound??
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Ron

Ronnie H wrote in post #16466439
Nice pictures,,i think that banding is OK,,but that one is not in the right place,,it already had one?couldn,t infro from that one been relayed, and no need for a secound??
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Ron

Check out post #9

Evan wrote in post #16465781
Whenever someone mentions tagging being a negative impact towards a bird, I always like to point out two things. One, the bird is alive, and two, there are thousands of birds around the world that have been tagged and recaptured year after year. These birds have no obvious signs that the tags have impacted their ability to survive. If you would like to look at some of this data you can go on the Cornell website, or the USGS website.

This bird has a very lightweight tag(far less than an ounce) placed above the knee joint. The location of this tag is optimally placed for the bird, and for the observer. When the bird is in flight, the location of the tag allows for the perfect tucking of the legs into the under feathers of the belly. If the tag was to be placed on the ankle, it would cause drag since it would stick out of the down. Tags are used for distant observation, and are always color coded to inform the observer of the location of the original capture. Tags are only ever placed on adult birds (tags can be applied to the chicks of large bird species). It is very likely that this bird was capture on breeding grounds via net cannon along with dozens of other tagged shorebirds.

The band on the ankle has the same information as the tag, and works as a backup in case the tag falls off. More importantly, the band provides additional information if the bird is recapture. Original capture date, location, and nesting grounds are often placed on these bands. Bands can be placed on chicks, and the bird will have it on their leg for the rest of their life. Both the bands and the tags are incredibly light, and if you had one in your hand you would not be able to notice it. If you would like to help out the ornithologist who track these bird's migrations, or find out where a bird has been, you can report any type of bird band or tag you find by going to www.reportband.gov

It happens quite a bit on this forum, but we have to be careful not to be too anthropomorphic towards birds. Maybe it is just the lack of knowledge about them and the practice of banding.

I hope this helps some people ,

Evan

"Changes in seabird populations, and particularly of penguins, offer a unique opportunity for investigating the impact of fisheries and climatic variations on marine resources. Such investigations often require large–scale banding to identify individual birds, but the significance of the data relies on the assumption that no bias is introduced in this type of long–term monitoring. After 5 years of using an automated system of identification of king penguins implanted with electronic tags (100 adult king penguins were implanted with a transponder tag, 50 of which were also flipper banded), we can report that banding results in later arrival at the colony for courtship in some years, lower breeding probability and lower chick production. We also found that the survival rate of unbanded, electronically tagged king penguin chicks after 2–3 years is approximately twice as large as that reported in the literature for banded chicks."

"
The physical annoyance of the ring can alter the agonistic behaviour of Magpies. Reese (1980) observed how they pecked at their rings repeatedly when unringed birds, under the same circumstances, were hammering their bills against branches or the ground.
Sandhill Cranes marked with colour rings and vinyl flags around standard rings avoided unmarked cranes and these in turn, avoided the marked ones (Wheeler &Lewis 1972).
Beletsky & Orians (1989) made an evaluation of the influence of colour rings on male mortality and reproductive success in Red-winged Blackbirds, failing to find any relationship among rings and these parameters. However, they say that "among species in which males, rather than the resources they control, are the primary basis of mate choice, band colours may be more influential". The results obtained by Brodsky (1988) support this. He found that male Ptarmigans Lagopus mutus with red and orange rings gained more mates than those without them. Males with the largest supraorbital combs - a target for sexual selection - get the highest number of mates. Male's mating success can be altered by using rings of a similar colour to that of the supraorbital combs."

"60% of the females wearing a wing tag were unable to acquire mates"

There are many problems with tagging common animals. Some birds do not expierience any of this, but why mess with nature when their numbers are more than adequate. For you to think that netting a bird where they nest has no effect at all is foolish. Tagging a bird that is having huge number declines is understandable, but a common bird? Once again, I know a few birds of the population will expierience problems but I personally think it is wrong. Two tags on the bird is to many. If I wanted to study how many kids stayed in the local area through high school is it right for me to go to a pre school and net some, band them (two times with one proportionally big), and then let them go back. I wonder if they would have any tramma from that expierience.