LISTEN: At the Georgia Gwinnett College Bird Lab, volunteers track and collect data from several traveling species. GPB's Amanda Andrews reports.

a cardinal held in a woman's hand over a book called "identification guide to north american birds"

CaryJo Titus holds a cardinal in what's called a "banders grip" to prevent the bird from flying off while she inspects it.

Credit: Amanda Andrews / GPB News

Across Georgia, groups of volunteer bird scientists wake up early to collect data — hands on. They’re doing something called "bird banding," a process involving catching and releasing birds after surveying them and placing a metal band on their leg.

Banding goes back decades through the U.S. Geological Survey and is part of a bird tracking program at Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC).

October is peak migration season, and the data is used nationally to track bird habits and even monitor climate change, though the USGS is now facing federal funding cuts. 

On an early Saturday morning in August, hours before the sun began to rise, a group of about a dozen volunteers spread across Harbins Park in Dacula, Ga., northeast of Atlanta. They’ve got on head lamps and knee high boots to set up nets.

“We have 10 net lanes that we set up, and we have numbers for them to know where the birds came from, said Mia Malloy, GGC associate professor of biology. 

Malloy is part of the GGC Bird Lab. Her team watches birds year-round. They are trained to carefully catch and band the flying animals most weekends when the weather’s right.

“You wouldn't want a bird if it were cold or something sitting there getting wet,” she said. “So we do not band in the rain. We do not band if it is extremely hot, because that's also bad for the birds — or if it's extremely cold.”

The metal bands the team uses come from the USGS. They’re distributed to all permitted bird-banding groups across North America. Each band comes with a unique number.

“It's kind of like a license plate or like a Social Security number,” said Maribel Fernandez, GGC biology instructor. “So, no bird, in the American continent, North and South, [are] gonna have the exact same band.”

Since the Bird Lab team started coming to Harbins Park in 2017, Malloy has become very familiar with the birds. She’s seen varieties from across the Southeast.  

“You're hearing them now,” she said, “right as we just start to get a little bit of daylight. We've heard the Carolina wren and northern cardinal, Louisiana waterthrush cheeping. They're waking up “

a woman holds a green warbler and spreads its wing

Carefully holding a green warbler, GGC Bird Lab volunteer CaryJo Titus studies the wing of the warbler, which was caught while bird banding.

Credit: Amanda Andrews / GPB News

One Carolina wren can tell volunteers a little about the habitat of Gwinnett County, but data from hundreds of wrens seen across decades is enough to affect policy. So volunteers like CaryJo Titus add data through all kinds of measurements.

“When I'm blowing on my bird I can see how many parts of the bird are molting and then give a good number of, like, 1 to 4 for molt level,” Titus said. “You can also see if there's any fat.”

Fernandez helps make sense of those measurements .

“So these are migratory birds, right?" she said. "The local birds we were talking about, the local birds, they don't put any fat at all. Like, ever."

Fernandez said, the team learns as much from the birds they no longer catch as the ones they still do.

“There are some birds that are very, very particular about the habitat they need,” she said. “If that habitat is disappearing, sometimes we're cutting it down, but sometimes it might be a disease. Sometimes it might be droughts, too much water. So they are going to move out of that place.”

Beyond the health of trees and rivers, bird banding data is also providing leads on research into infectious diseases.

“We are helping a study from a student at UGA that is studying the diseases that are carried by the ticks that are on the birds,” Fernandez said, “and see if those diseases get transferred just to other birds or if they are diseases that might get transferred to people.”

Two small brown birds held in a person's hands

Members of the GGC Bird Lab hold two captured brown thrashers.

Credit: Maribel Fernandez

It takes more than a group of eager volunteers to manage all this information. It also takes a database to store it.  That’s where the U.S Geological Survey’s Bird Banding Lab comes in.

Malloy said if federal funding cuts filters down to the banding lab, she fears it would mean more than an inconvenience.

“Another big fear we have, if the bird banding laboratory is shut down, they will shut down the databases,” Malloy said. “We will no longer have access to literally 100 years worth of bird banded data. And that would be catastrophic for our knowledge of wild bird populations.” 

It would also be catastrophic for our understanding of the ecosystems where the birds live. Bird banding data informs conservation work, climate change research, and major industries like hunting.

But for now, Malloy and the bird lab are still banding. Even if there’s no money in it. 

"Nobody's paying us to do this, no salary; we are all volunteering our time,” she said 

Because understanding our world, through birds, is a cause they believe in.

Tags: birds  bird watching  science  Gwinnett County  USGS  Georgia