During the spring and fall, dozens of migrant species of birds briefly land at Fort Morgan on their journeys north or south. Alabama Audubon hosts an observation station where scientists, conservationists, and the public can observe birds up close. It’s called bird banding.
Alabama is on the edges of two migratory flyways which are the routes birds take to the northern U.S. or Canada in the spring. The direction changes in the fall with Mexico or the Caribbean being the preferred destinations. Researchers from the Audubon Birding Society keep track of these feathered visitors by setting up nets on the east end of Ft. Morgan. They gently catch and examine some of those birds and place a metal band around the bird’s ankle. Each banding season adds to decades of research and tracking data telling how bird populations are changing.
“This is a Rose-breasted grosbeak,” said Doctor Scot Duncan. He’s Executive Director of Alabama Audubon. His audience today are birdwatchers and what types of birds they’re seeing.
“This is another of our birds that's migrating through today that does not breed in the southeast,” said Duncan. “This bird still has a long ways to go. This is the male, very brightly colored. The female is strikingly colored too, but she has tans and blacks and browns as her colors.”
Duncan points out the rose coloration on the passing grossbeak that gives the bird its name. He says he educates about birds and their environment because if people know something exists, they are more likely to protect it.
“Getting people out here to see these birds up close and personal is critical. Some of these super bright blue birds that we've been seeing are indigo buntings,” Duncan onserved. “It is incredibly impressive to see those birds in the sunshine and in someone's hand just a few feet away from you.”
Duncan has been coming to Fort. Morgan since he was little. His parents observed birds with the Audubon Society. Duncan says species distribution is one of the changes he has seen over his lifetime.
“Their ranges are expanding, and for some of those species that has to do with climate change. It's getting warmer, so birds that are normally in the subtropics or the tropics are able to survive farther and farther north,” he said. “birds that are normally in the subtropics or the tropics are able to survive farther and farther north. And so yesterday we saw five black-bellied whistling ducks, which are these really gaudy colored ducks that have been invading the southeast from Florida up through the Caribbean, and then moving their way northward. The landscape's becoming better for them because the landscape's getting warmer.
Duncan says some birds have disappeared because of climate change, diseases, and the destruction of their habitats.
“I was born at the end of the sixties, and since then we've lost about one-third of North American birds,” Duncan recalled. “We are now missing about 3 billion with a B, birds out of 10 billion over the past 50 years. So imagine going out into the forest and for every two birds that we see today, it would be a third there with them. That's the difference that we've seen over that time. That is a huge change that's affecting our ecosystems, our culture, and our economy. Not all birds are declining. Some are doing quite well, but the types of birds that are declining especially are the wetland birds and the grass line birds. They're dying due to our use of insecticides.”
Duncan explains that observing birds and migratory flight patterns is more than a hobby. It’s also about saving humanity.
“Nature's not just window dressing to our lives for us to do things on weekends, or to go bird watching. Nature in general is our life support system. Our access to clean air, clean water, good soils, all of that is dependent on having all these species in the landscape, maintaining all the ecological processes that keep the whole world humming. My career started off as a focus on saving species and preventing extinction, but now it's about also saving humanity because of how closely we are tied to nature. That is now the science, science on that is a hundred percent solid now.”
“He knows how to get the very edge of your skin,” said 14-year-old Ava Lyerly. She’s holding a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak. She once dreamed of hand-feeding a bird then woke up and had to do it in real life. She started The North Alabama Young Birders club to meet birders her age.
“Grosbeak’s name literally means large bill, as you can see,” said Lyerly.
Ava says holding birds for banding can be painful, but it also helps her understand the beauty and personality of each bird.
“You're holding a little bundle of joy and sometimes a little bit of anger,” she observed. “I was just holding the White-eyed vireo. That was the first bird I ever held. I remember looking in his eye, and he just looked at me. He wasn't biting me, and he was just looking at me. I was like, I know you want to go, but you are very cute.”
“There's several of the Northern Parula, and they're beautiful birds, and that's probably my favorite that I've taken today so far,” said photographer Debi Parnell. She comes to bird bandings to take photographs of species she can’t find in her backyard. She says the first step to taking a good picture is position and patience. She learns the bird’s behaviors and what to expect.
“You study, so you know which birds are going to move quickly, flitting from branch to branch and which ones are going to be more apt to be in the top of the trees,” said Parnell. “Which ones are going to be in the brush, which one feeds on seeds or in the grass. Which one feeds on insects on the tree trunks and things like that. Once you learn about the birds, you know what to expect and can kind of wait for that behavior if you take your time.”
Parnell says she is always learning something new about nature and photography.
“If I say I love this, it's because I remember exactly what I had to do to get the shot,” said Parnell. “I remember how I felt. I remember the whole thing. And so it's just so fulfilling. “It is showing people things that they'll never see or have never seen, and it just broadens their perspective of life too, for them to be able to see things they've never seen. How awesome is it to be wowed. Life is about those wow moments.”
Scot Duncan says educating the public is one of the most important parts of bird banding and Alabama Audubon. Once people understand the birds and where they nest, they are more likely to protect them.
“Scientists are realizing that there are long-lasting psychological benefits when people go out and spend time doing these things in nature. Once we lose a species, it is lost forever,” said Duncan. “It’s up to us to keep them around so that people will always be able to enjoy this and also have those survival systems in place for the rest of the time that humanity's on the planet, which I hope is a very long time.”
