For those of you who did not know, today was International Migratory Bird Day, a day devoted to the celebration of migratory birds and their journeys between their breeding grounds in the northern US and Canada, and their wintering grounds in Mexico, Central and South America and the West Indies.

For more information on this wonderful (and past) event, check out their website, and get ready for next year!:

http://www.birdday.org/

For our part in celebrating this day we allowed visitors coming from nearby Muir Woods to stop by and see our banding efforts at one of our offsites, Redwood Creek. We had a fairly good day today with 23 birds being caught. As expected it was an average day of species (Allen’s Hummingbird, Western Flycatcher, Bewick’s Wren, Swainson’s Thrush, American Robin, Wilson’s Warbler, Song Sparrow, and American Goldfinch), but with all the birds caught, all of our visitors had the ability to observe a bird in the hand. In fact one of our visitors was from British Columbia, where she herself is a bander. It is hard to deny the appeal of wild birds, particularly colorful ones in the hand, and if we can do our part with these birds that we catch to help increase awareness for migratory birds than it only helps to increase my love for my work.

~Chad (05/13/2006)