Humming Birds : Catch and Release

My mom told me this morning that I needed to check out this article from the newspaper.  Anyway, I wanted to post a few pictures from a bird banding that Brandon and I went to  a few months ago.  We were at the beach, and I made Brandon wake up before daylight so that we could go to this wild bird banding. Why???  Because after the birds are banded and recorded, they let you release the bird back into the wild.  I thought it was really neat, but Brandon…not so much.  Whatever, it was cool.

This is one of the big special nets that they catch the birds with.  There are several of these around the perimeter of the banding site, and volunteers check them for birds every 15 minutes.

Once they catch a bird, someone will identify the bird, and then wrap a tiny band around it’s leg with a number on it.  None of this hurts the bird.  After that, one of the volunteers will tell what kind of bird it is, and a little about it.

Mr. Bob knows a ton about wild birds.

P.S. No makeup, wearing the retainer…it was so early!  Oh yeah, and did I mention that Brandon and I were the first people there.  Haha!

You have to properly hold the bird to release it.  They are so TINY and fragile!

Here is the bird that I released.

And here is the bird that Brandon released.

He didn’t wait for me to take a picture, so all I got was a blurry few feathers. haha!

And this is what Brandon thought about getting up with the sun to go see some birds.