We've been away from Hilton Pond Center for a ten-day family reunion off in the hinterlands of Kentucky where organizing responsibilities left us little time for nature exploring. We did get introduced, however, to Bluegrass hospitality, Ohio River steamboats, horse racing at Churchill Downs, the Louisville Slugger baseball bat factory, and "Kentucky Hot Brown" (photo above)--a wondrous open-face baked "sandwich" of sourdough bread, sliced turkey, grated country ham, and cheddar cheese sauce topped with bacon and tomatoes and Parmesan. (NOTE: Our stomachs can attest first-hand that an average-sized serving of this tasty dish will feed about a dozen non-Kentuckians.) While in Kentucky we also received an interesting e-mail from wildlife data assistant Carolyn Parker (above right) of the federal Bird Banding Laboratory in Laurel MD, with a Subject line of "Report to Bander." Any communication from the BBL with those three words in the title is a cause for bander jubilation because they mean someone . . . somehow . . . somewhere . . . has encountered one of our banded birds.

All text, maps & photos © Hilton Pond Center

Our latest "Report to Bander" (above) for Hilton Pond Center might not look like much, but it's chock full of important and interesting information--mostly written in secret code known only to bird banders. (Just kidding, of course. The alphanumeric codes provide a shorthand method of providing lots of info in minimal space.)

All text, maps & photos © Hilton Pond Center
Map by Elaine Nakash courtesy Bird Banding Lab

Some items are self-explanatory--for example, the master bander's permit number-- and "Banding Information" is provided on the left side of the report while encounter info appears on the right. Other entries may need a little clarification, so here's our explanation for the original banding data. (You might want to click on the "Report to Bander" image here to open a larger version you can refer to for the discussion that follows.)

• The bird's band number (2541-28448) obviously comes from the aluminum band we applied to the bird's leg at time of original capture (25 Jan 2011). Bands offer the safest way to permanently mark a wild bird.
• "Region 180" is for South Carolina, while the Lat/Lon (345/0811) is an abbreviated form of Hilton Pond Center's actual GPS coordinates in York (34.973652 North,
  81.222988 West).
• The "Dir" category is "0," which stands for an unusual category for "Direction," i.e., that the banding occurred in the Northwest quarter of the Earth (see four-part map above).
• "AOU" stands for American Ornithologists' Union, the most prestigious of the Western Hemipsphere's ornithology organizations. This is a misleading column head in that the four-letter alpha codes created by the Bird Banding Lab as shorthand identifiers for each bird species aren't necessarily recognized by the AOU. (The BBL is considering changing the column head to something like "Alpha.") Nonetheless, in this case the AOU/Alpha Code of "PUFI" is not for "puffin" but for our banded "Purple Finch," also known as Carpodacus purpureus. (Note that alpha codes are not true abbreviations; Ruby-throated Hummingbird is "RTHU," not something like "RTH" or "RUTH" or "RUHU." The alpha code system makes perfect sense once you understand what the guidelines are.)
• "A-S" is shorthand for "Age-Sex", with "5-0" standing for "After Hatch Year-Unknown." We didn't know our Purple Finch's sex at time of banding because it was brown (example below right) and could have been a female or a young male. (Among PUFI, males don't begin to acquire their raspberry-red plumage until they are two years old.) We did know one thing about the bird's age, however: At time of capture in January it could NOT have been an immature bird; i.e., it must have hatched at least in the breeding season of 2010, making it an "after-hatch-year" bird as of 1 January 2011. (As with Kentucky racehorses, birds become "one year older" on New Year's Day.)
• And for the last item under capture info, "Status" means the bird's general condition. A "300" indicates the PUFI was a healthy, free-flying wild bird at time of capture and all we did to it was apply a band after making measurements. (By comparison, each Ruby-throated Hummingbird we band at Hilton Pond Center also gets a swatch of temporary green dye on its upper breast, giving it a color-marked status of "308.")

Encounter data are as follows:

• Date/Location: The bird was encountered on 22 May 2011--almost exactly four months after banding at Hilton Pond--near Kouchibouguac, New Brunswick, Canada just north of St. Louis de Kent. The "Region" is "656" at "Lat/Lon 464/0645." That locale is obviously north and east of York SC but still within the northwest corner of the globe ("Dir 0").
• "How" refers to how the bird was encountered, with "00" meaning "Found dead."
• "Who" is for "Who reported," with "21" meaning the bird's "Finder" actually filed the report. (Sometimes the finder informs a bander or wildlife officer who in turn reports the encounter to the BBL.)
• "PC" is not "politically correct" but "Present Condition." A code of "04" denotes the band was left on the dead bird and both were then discarded. (We encourage folks to save all banded birds by frezing them in a plastic bag and finding a local nature center or college ornithology class that could use the specimen.)
• "Rpt Meth" is a relatively new code initiated by the Bird Banding Lab to assess relative effectiveness of various "Report Methods." In the old days, all findings were transmitted to the BBL by mail and it took several weeks for a response. Eventually a toll-free number (800-327-BAND) was established--with good results. More recently, many banded birds are being reported via the BBL's on-line Internet form, which has the added advantage of giving a finder immediate feedback if the bird's banding data has already been submitted by the bander. In the case of the Kouchibouguac encounter, "07" means the finder reported our Purple Finch via the Web form. (To report an encounter, see "Report an Encounter of a Marked Bird".)

The last entry is "Finder Name," and in this case she's Serena Woods of New Brunswick. (The original form also included Serena's mailing address, which we deleted for privacy reasons. We'll try to contact her for more info.) It's apparent that without initiative by the finder a bander would never know where locally banded birds dispersed or migrated, so Serena's role in completing the circle of understanding is all-important. In a sense, she is now a "citizen scientist" who confirmed that a Purple Finch banded during winter at Hilton Pond Center returned within four months to its breeding range in far-off New Brunswick--about 1,200 straight-line miles from York SC.

All text, maps & photos © Hilton Pond Center
Base map courtesy Google Earth

(NOTE: Click on map above to open a larger,
easier to read version in a new browser window)

As amazing as this flight to Kouchibouguac was by a bird that weighed perhaps 28 grams (one ounce!), it's not the first of our Purple Finches to show up in the Canadian Provinces. In fact, as noted on the map above and on Table 1 below there appears to be some sort of connection between Hilton Pond and eastern Canada, with nine of our banded Purple Finches showing up north of the border. (We should mention another seven PUFI from the Center have been encountered in the northeastern or north central U.S. from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania to Maine.)

Our most recent Purple Finch encounter from Kouchibouguac actually traveled a much shorter distance than several of its conspecifics--especially the one found a remarkable 1,660 miles away in Lewisporte, Newfoundland. (We don't even want to talk about the PUFI that was killed by a free-roaming cat after flying nearly 1,300 miles to Nova Scotia!) The long-distance thing is fun to think about, of course, but these foreign reports tell us something more important: Because Purple Finches typically depart Hilton Pond Center before the end of March and since all encounters above are from late May or June it's almost certain these birds were already on their Canadian breeding grounds. From this we can safely conclude a significant number of Purple Finches that overwinter at the Center nest to our northeast in Canada--sometimes quite far away.

All text, maps & photos © Hilton Pond Center

This is valuable information that emphasizes "our" wintering Purple Finches in the Carolinas aren't really ours. They're a shared resource with our neighbors up in Canada, so no matter how much we do to preserve winter habitat in the lower 48 states it won't do much good unless similar efforts exist north of the border, and vice versa. Purple Finches (banded male, above) might not be as sexy and exciting and colorful as Neotropical migrants such as warblers, tanagers, and hummingbirds that need protection in Central and South America, but they're still part of the overarching North American ecosystem and deserve just as much attention. Bird banding and the reporting of foreign encounters like our Purple Finch from Kouchibouguac provide a regular, irrefutable, and easily understood reminder of this wonderful interconnectedness of nature, so we're thankful Serena Woods was interested enough to investigate the PUFI she found in far-off New Brunswick.

30th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Right after returning from our recent family reunion in Kentucky (see above) we watched the calendar roll over to 28 June 2012--an auspicious date because it marked the 30th anniversary of our first banded bird at what is now Hilton Pond Center. Some background: We were in the final year of grad school in Minnesota when we decided to move the Hiltons back south to continue teaching careers. Fortunately, during Christmas holidays in 1981 we found 11 acres and an old farmhouse on the outskirts of York SC and put down some earnest money, returning to close the deal in March 1982. That month we also planted a bunch of bird-friendly shrubs on the property perimeter and installed several truly huge hopper feeders that immediately started attracting birds.

All text, maps & photos © Hilton Pond Center

A few months later we undertook the move to York and on 28 June 1982 unpacked and set out a couple of traps baited with corn and black sunflower. That day we caught only one adult female Common Grackle (at center above) with a brood patch--a bird that became the first of 900 individuals of her species to be banded locally over the next three decades.

All text, maps & photos © Hilton Pond Center

(NOTE: Click on chart above to open a larger,
easier to read version in a new browser window)

During that span (28 June 1982 through 30 June 2012) we've handled a total of 57,525 birds of 126 species, averaging 1,856 birds per year. Someone pointed out on the Center's new Facebook page that this is an average of "more than five birds a day, every day, for the last 30 years!" We haven't actually run nets and traps EVERY day, of course, so some of those days were much busier than others.

All text, maps & photos © Hilton Pond Center

(NOTE: Click on chart above to open a larger,
easier to read version in a new browser window)

All in all we're pleased by our accomplishments during three decades of work--including banding at least 400 individuals of 23 species (see chart above). This on-going endeavor makes Hilton Pond Center the most active year-round bird banding station in the Carolinas and one of very few generating long-term data about birds within the ten-state Eastern Piedmont Region. By banding birds we've learned a great deal about avian distribution and abundance in the Piedmont, about site fidelity and migration, and about bird longevity--among other things. We've had a good run that has been rewarding and fun, and we hope you've enjoyed and learned from our efforts since 2001 as we've written about banding on-line through "This Week at Hilton Pond." Please allow us to further share our pleasure as we observe the Center's sparkling 30th anniversary in 2012.

All text, maps & photos © Hilton Pond Center

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