Why does PBOT band Painted Buntings?
Capturing and banding Painted Buntings allows us to identify an individual bird throughout its life. Through resightings and recaptures of our banded birds we gain knowledge about a variety of life characteristics, including site fidelity, dispersal and migration, life-span and survival rate, reproductive success and population growth, and the behavior of individual Painted Buntings. When our trained banding staff captures a Painted Bunting, they first identify its age and sex, and access its fat accumulation and feather molt and wear, to help track its overall health. Then they carefully attach a unique combination of three brightly-colored bands and one silver band that is etched with an identifying number from the US Bird Banding Laboratory. Because the etched number is too small to see from afar, the unique combination and arrangement of the colored bands with the silver band is what allows our volunteers to identify an individual bird at the feeder. The combination can also indica
