Banded Birds

Keith et al~

Here is the most interesting band I came across. We had been rocket netting Brant on a golf course in Lawrence in 1982. There were always a few Mallards and Wigeon feeding on the fairways along with the Brant. And, this part of Long Island - south shore of western Nassau County - always had a few Eurasian Wigeon. When we fired the net, we captured a hen Wigeon as "by-catch". The only way we suspected it was a Eurasian and not an American was that she was banded and the band was written in a Scandinavian language.

We called the Danish embassy in Manhattan and someone there translated the band for us. This is the letter I received. Since she was still alive when we released her, I wonder if the band was ever recovered again.


Iceland%20Wigeon%20001_zpsanrrj2sl.jpg


I am guessing the "pull." is an abbreviation for pullet - and so she was hatching-year in 1979.

BTW 1 - Despite his greeting to me - I am not a "Dr." - although, like most of us, I have performed minor surgeries as needed.

BTW 2: At that same golf course, that same year, I got to see the only white-phase Gyrfalcon I've ever seen. It swooped on some feeding Mallards - and I got to see Mallards fly faster than ever before...

All the best,

SJS
 
On a 2011 goose hunt we got both, an old one and one that traveled quite a ways. One was banded in Greenland in 2009, it had a plastic neck band, leg band and metal leg band. The other (HUGE) goose came in as we were picking up decoys. He was from NY, but was banded in 1998 as an adult. So he was at least 14 years old.

Greenland
Greenlandgoose.jpg
[/img]

NY
bigbandedgoose.jpg
[/img]


Info received for the Greenland bird

Dear Keith (with thanks to you Kane for forwarding the record, and copies to Kaj and Rose for your records)
Thanks so very much for taking the trouble to send the report of the Canada Goose bearing the neck collar GD8 which you shot in Vineland, Cumberland, New Jersey on 29 January 2011. I write to confirm that this was a goose that we banded in Greenland and that we are extremely excited about the news! This was one of the birds banded as part of a project to mark Greenland White-fronted and Canada Geese in west Greenland in summer 2009, and your observations are of great interest! You will see that this goose was seen in Connecticut in the winter following capture, and was seen back in Greenland during summer 2010 in the vicinity of its original catch site, where we had teams of researchers studying the geese. You will also note your bird was seen in Nova Scotia in November en route to the winter quarters, where it was seen with GF7, an adult female from the same catch, so this bird links very many sites along the known flyway and provides us with considerable information.
GD8 was ringed on a lake simply known as Lake C to the catching team (very few lakes in this area have Greenlandic names) which is at 67°06’26"N 50°28’38"N in an area known as Isunngua, immediately north of the airport at Kangerlussuaq in west Greenland. This has been a study area for our investigations on and off over many years. I can tell you that GD8 was an adult male when caught, part of a catch of 33 birds (10 goslings and 23 adults, so likely a mixture of non-breeders and families) on 15th July 2008. You will be tickled to know that the banding crew scored him as "Very very aggressive" at the time, in stark contrast to the other adults in the same catch, which were generally rather "calm" - which suggests he put up quite a fight when captured!
Thanks very much for all the details that you supplied which perfectly match the ringing details (organised from the Copenhagen Zoological Museum that is responsible for ringing in Greenland, hence the Danish ring 2H-9296) and thanks very much for supplying such an accurate recovery site and position, this is a huge help to us.
I have taken the liberty of attaching two files at the bottom of this mail for your information - one containing the listing with your observation along with others from this year so far and a pdf file containing a short (now very out of date) paper describing our earlier findings (this file need Adobe Reader to open - let me know if you cannot open this). If you would like a little more information about the project in summer 2009 up until now, you can find this at: http://greenland2010.wikispaces.com/...nd+resightings with an update from this year via the link on the bottom of the list in the Word document.
Needless to say, if you have any other later reports of this bird or any other ringed or collared Canada Geese (especially those beginning with G since these are ours!) please do not hesitate to report them - we would be extremely interested to know whether any other leg bands or collars turn up in this area. We do very much appreciate the trouble to which you have gone to find the right source to report these geese and are delighted to have received the information!
Do not hesitate to get in touch if you would like further information!
All very best wishes and enormous thanks again!
Tony

Tony Fox
Department of Wildlife Ecology and Biodiversity
National Environmental Research Institute
University of Aarhus
Kalø
Grenåvej 14
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Wow that Eurasian Wigeon is incredible. I live in the Hudson River Valley of NY which is an enormous natural migratory corridor that runs north/south. We get a lot of very exotic bands and see quite an array of exotic waterfowl and other bird species using in bi-seasonally. My friends are ornithologists and every fall and winter they see Barnacle geese from Ireland and Scotland winter on Long Island. Some of these geese are banded and the band data is from that area of Europe. They are "simply" island hopping from Ireland/Scotland over to Iceland, over to Greenland, over to Labrador down to Newfoundland, and then down the North Atlantic Seaboard to winter on Long Island. And then they do the same migration back in the spring. It's quite fascinating.
 
Another great story. Thanks so much,Jay, for posting it. I can see why the biologists were so excited! Sure enjoyed the two pictures, also.
Al
 
I killed a 17 year old goose once. Could barely make out the numbers.

The guy who banded it sent me a letter. It was pretty cool. It had been handed right where I killed it.
 
Keith - Two things...
  1. Our group has shot banded scaup that were banded by our group with at least one of them on the day we were present banding. Imagine that, shooting a bird you actually banded.
  2. I took a gentleman goose hunting about 4 years ago. He shot 3 geese in 2 days. All 3 were from separate flocks being banded in separate states and locations.
Nice post! Pat
 
I was a long time spanning several dogs before Daisy finally brought me my first band in 2006......and it was her first goose (ever). A year later she did
it again, The photos and information have been scattered in old journals for several years.....until reading this thread.

The duck season is over now and our mild winter weather is making for "strange" goose patterns. However my oldest dog, Kooly, added one more goose
band to the lanyard.

This spare time and Kooly's band sparked a desire to search out "band memories" and combine them into one page.

http://www.kwicklabsii.com/goose-bands.html
---------------
 
Last edited:
25 years ago I shot a banded drake wood duck in Wilkinson County Georgia that had been banded in Ohio two years previous
 
There are some fantastic stories in here guys! I have 2 bands-1 duck and 1 goose. The duck was a mallard that I shot in the West Desert of Utah that had been banded 2 years earlier on the west end of the Great Slave Lake in Canada-I looked it up on Google Earth and it was almost exactly 1400 miles from where it was banded to where I shot it. Second band is a goose band that I got earlier this season, the goose was banded less than a mile from where I shot it and the bander happened to be a good buddy of mine!
 
My father and I have taken ringed mallards on the same day... Three separate times. All of these hunts occurred at the same hunting location. Needless to say we love that spot.

We have both taken neck-marked geese on the same hunt on three separate occasions as well. Each of those days was a special memory etched into my mind.

The most exihilirating of all was the day a 4 pack came into us... Low and slow... We went outside in. 4 shots and 4 birds. Three of them were doubles and 1 was a single. Most memorable flock of birds ever.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top