The travels of R/2

This is the story of a very, very rare occurrence: the chance discovery of a marked bird. Of the millions that have been marked over the years since bird-banding began in the U.S., Canada and England, Russia, not many have ever been heard from again.

I've been banding birds-or as it is known in Canada and England, "ringing"- since 1962, when the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service issued my banding permit. Ten years earlier, in 1952, I began looking into great horned owl, golden eagle, red-tailed, ferruginous, and Swainson hawk nests, wishing I had a banding permit so I could learn what happened to those fledgling raptors after they left the nest for Life's Great Adventure.

I once visited a northern goshawk nest, but it took me a long time to heal up from that adventure, so I scratched them off my list. They're the largest of the accipiter tribe - the bird hawks - which include the smaller Copper's hawk and the very cranky, pigeon-sized sharp-shinned hawk. They all possess the wonderful propensity for protecting their nestlings from snooping wannabe bird-banders, and can inflict (read that as have inflicted) considerable pain on one's posterior.

Banding birds is not a new thing to do, it all began round 210 BC when a Roman military officer, Quintus Fabius Pictor, used a common crow with a thread attached to its leg to send messages between garrisons. Falconers in the 1500s placed a stamped, leather seal on their hunting birds to show ownership.

In the 1800s, storks nesting in Germany were observed returning from their winter destination with hunter's arrows from Africa stuck in them; the earliest evidence of migration.

According to Wikipeda, the first actual banding of a bird was carried out by Paul Bartsch of the Smithsonian Institution. He banded 23 black-crowned night herons in 1902, while the federal governments of the U.S. and Canada began the formal banding of birds in 1920 and 1923. But it's interesting to note that the first formal keeping of records of banded birds was by Leon Cole of the University of Wisconsin, when he founded the American Bird Banding Association in 1909.

In addition to the leg band, some researchers use patagial (wing) markers, such as that seen in the photo above. These are permanent markers easily seen and used by researchers wanting to obtain more data on the birds they've marked.

R/2 was marked by raptor biologist Carole Hallett, who is responsible for removing birds from the Portland Airport to avoid bird strikes.

Hallett has been conducting this project for a number of years, and marks all the raptors she live-traps. Each bird is released miles from the airport, and when she is notified of a sighting of one of the birds she released it provides information on movement patterns.

Kelly Rios sent me the photo, at right, that she shot near the Knott Landfill in Bend.

After hearing of the R/2 sighting, Carole sent me a note saying, "I know of at least two other orange wing-tagged red-tails that were spotted out near Prineville: 8Y was seen by me near Hwy. 26 milepost 85 on 10/3/14 and 49 was seen near Prineville on 9/15/14. Both had been released on the same day as R/2.

You can be of great help in assisting Carole to keep track of the birds she releases by watching for other raptors with wing tags.

The USGS Banding Lab has links on their website to report marked birds. All you have to do is go to http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbl/ and follow the links to reporting a marked or banded bird. The lab will send you an electronic response to your report with the name of the person(s) who did the marking and banding.

Banding birds has provided some surprises for me over the years, in addition to learning that newly fledged golden eagles wandered into the southwest for winter. I had a recovery of a red-tailed hawk that was shot on a game preserve in Idaho that was banded 21 years earlier in Fort Rock. I've also had recoveries from osprey I banded at the Crane Prairie Osprey Management Area that spent winters in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and as far south as Volcan, Costa Rica.

Back in the '50s, when I was an ardent waterfowl hunter, I had the biggest surprise of my life when I got into a bunch of migrating snow geese and ended up coming home to Bend with my limit of geese wearing Russian bands.