Home Among the Birds

It was only 8 a.m. when I parked my car in a dewy meadow near Franklin, North Carolina, but the bird banding crew I was meeting had already been at work for hours.

I made my way through the tall grass to Mark Hopey, the project leader, who greeted me while grasping a feathery little chickadee in his hand. 

I returned the greeting while simultaneously fishing out my camera and snapping picture after picture of the tiny bird. 

Who knew? 

This bird in hand could be my only chance to get the photos I needed for the story I was reporting. Hopey eventually asked me if I had what I needed and released the bird to the air. 

“That one was a little raggedy anyway,” he said. “You’ll get some better pictures later.”

He sounded quite certain, and surprised me. Songbirds are by nature elusive, unpredictable, un-catchable. 

Or so I thought. 

Collecting data for a national bird-monitoring project — Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship — Hopey and his two assistants had set up a passel of thin-webbed nets among the trails and trees of the conserved land next to the meadow. 

Every 30 minutes they’d check the nets, retrieve any birds snared there, place identification bands on their legs and record data on everything from wingspan to body fat. 

Hopey invited me along for the first net check after my arrival, and we set off down a grassy, tree-bordered trail. 

The morning air was cool and the humidity a pleasant mantle under a sun still too low to beat oppressively, as it would later in this July day. 

We paused upon reaching an intersection with a narrow trail leading down to the first net, about as wide as a volleyball net and substantially taller than me. 

No birds there. 

The second net came up empty as well and I began to mentally replay the pictures I’d snapped of the chickadee, wondering if there might be any worth running in the newspaper. 

But just as we arrived at the third net, a pair of feathery black-and-white bodies spiraled straight into it, snared by the dark weave. 

Two black-and-white warblers, netted simultaneously. 

We froze, briefly, to ooh and ahh over the moment. 

Then Hopey carefully untangled the birds from the net and stored each in its own brown paper bag, top twisted shut and side marked in Sharpie indicating the bird’s species and sex. 

The wings fluttered against the paper like fairy wings as we carried them back to the table. 

There would be more where that came from. 

In the hours I spent at Cowee Mound, bags arrived bearing chickadees, goldfinches, all manner of warblers, and even an indigo bunting. 

As the bags piled up, I found myself transforming from journalist to volunteer field technician, and it was wonderful. 

I should add here one of my two college majors was a natural resources degree that’s designed to produce park rangers and conservation planners. 

I wound up in journalism, but my classmates are mostly working for the National Park Service and various other government and nonprofit entities. 

Some of them are doing just what I found myself up to that morning in the meadow –hanging out in the fresh air and taking data on wildlife. 

So when Hopey handed me the data log and started reading out measurements—“Age is 2 by S and P, Sex is F by W”—I experienced a feeling much like the one you get when you visit your parents’ house after a long time away and your mom makes mac and cheese just the way you loved it growing up. 

You wouldn’t want to trade your adult existence for living at home and eating your mom’s cooking every day, but the feeling of being able to slide so effortlessly into your former niche is thrilling, and tasty. 

Banding birds, talking conservation, using words like “dataset,” “sample size” and “population trends”—it gave me some nerdy goosebumps, to be honest. 

But there’s nothing nerdy about the goosebumps you get from holding a shimmering live songbird, feeling its tiny rapid heartbeat, the glossy ruffle of its feathers and the scaly dryness of its feet. 

It’s just plain amazing, and getting to do this over and over again was hands-down the best part of my morning with the scientists. 

I remember one time as a kid when a flock of cedar waxwings descended on our backyard woods, feasting on berries until there were none left. 

The food gone, they rose in unison and left in search of the next bonanza. 

My mom was so excited, pulling out her binoculars to get a better look through the kitchen window. 

I was convinced thereafter that cedar waxwings were a magical sort of species, a rarity that only the chosen are privileged to witness. 

If that is the case, then I’m mightily privileged. 

The last bird we netted before I had to leave was a cedar waxwing, and though I found no traces of fairy dust on its wings, it would be a lie to say it wasn’t magical. 

Its feathers transitioned smoothly from ruddy brown to steel blue as they progressed from top to bottom, and its face was striking in a mask of black. 

Most amazing of all, however, were the tomato-red tips of wax along the bottoms of its wings. They’re a feature unique to the species. 

I touched the wax, gently, and Hopey’s assistant Lisa Marie Norvill handed me the bird to release.

I looked it over for a long moment, taking in its bright black eyes, its striking colors, the feel of its feathers against my skin. 

Then I released it to soar back into the rhythms of its wild life. 

I watched it go, and then I said my goodbyes, returning to the car that would transport me to the folds of my own natural habitat.

Southern Appalachian Raptor Research participates in the study Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship every year and welcomes anyone, scientist or not, to come and help with the data. bigbaldbanding.org/maps.