Why Band Brant?
Banding of Brant is done to provide information regarding their migratory routes. Through recovery of bird bands, data on direction and duration of migration is obtained. Sightings of live tagged birds and retrieval of dead bird tags provide additional information about birds’ use of migration areas and provides indications of survival rates and life spans. Who Uses the Information? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Bird Banding Laboratory in Maryland maintains a record of all bird bands in the United States. All researchers must obtain permits from the Bird Banding Laboratory in order to embark on a bird marking project. Marked birds must have, at a minimum, a silver colored U.S. Fish and Wildlife band with an 8 or 9 digit number. This number and all information about the bird- such as sex, age, weight, condition, date, and place of banding- are on file at the Bird Banding Laboratory. Why Use Colored Tags? Quite often researchers will also tag another part of a bird. This extra tag i
