How Do We Catch Birds?

We catch them in mist nets:


This is the first mist net I set up this morning. I put it up in complete darkness without a hitch, so I was pretty pleased with myself.

Here are some other nets I set up:


And here are some nets with birds actually in them:



Setting up the nets is not one of my favorite parts of the project. It's usually pitch black, cold, and it's not always easy to get the poles in the ground (that's where the sledgehammer comes into play), though with all the rain the ground has been nice and soft so far. The worst part is that the nets are extremely easy to tangle. If you drop a line, get caught on something, flip the handles or just look at it funny it can become a gigantic nightmare of a knot. A ball of tangled yarn would be a piece of cake in comparison. My most frustrating moments by far have come in the wee hours of the morning, when I've placed my poles and simply can't get my net up. I know the sun is going to be coming up soon and the critical time to catch robins and some other species before it is really light will soon be past, but I still can't untangle the darn thing.

The fun part is getting the birds out of the net. We check the nets frequently, every few minutes, and every net run is like getting a surprise present since you never know what you'll find. It's a bit of a challenge to get some of the birds untangled, but it is a puzzle I enjoy. In fact, it is the best part of my day most days, it's like a new brain teaser every time.

Here's some photos of birds caught in our nets:
Female goldfinch.
Gray catbird.
Tufted titmouse.
Male house sparrow.

In case you are worried, shortly after taking each of these photos, I extricated the birds pictured from the nets without harming them. They were then weighed, bled, banded and set free. Here we are all this morning frantically processing birds (you can see how many we have hanging in bags on the tripod).



For the sake of completeness, I should mention there are a few other ways the field crew has used to catch birds in the past. On the mall, they sometimes scoop pigeons with nets. I don't know if I'll get a chance to try that, but my advisor says the onlookers usually cheer them on.