Bird banders calling ‘bogus’ on so-called Big Beautiful Bill

LPBO Program Coordinator Emma Buck gently removes a Yellow-Bellied Flycatcher from a mist net. (Jeff Tribe Photo)

Jeff Tribe, Post Correspondent

Concerns environmental fallout from Donald Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill could migrate north of the border have come to roost at the Long Point Bird Observatory (LPBO).

According to LPBO volunteer Jenny Evans, provisions within the bill would cut funding to the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) ecosystems mission area. Within that division, Evans continued, are biologists who look at species at risk, and additionally, the keepers of USGS bird banding data.

“The removal of that central data base will remove our ability to track the movement of birds or age of birds,” said Evans.

In short, the USGS is both the sole source of all the bands used in North and Central America, contracted from a private company, and also the end destination for data from said bands. Each contains a unique nine-digit identifying code which prevents confusion, as well as a coordinated and centralized compilation procedure.

“Every station, every research project,” said Evans, “everyone that puts a band on a bird.”

Data collected and correlated on a continental scope provides a good indicator of habitat degradation, insect population and human impact says LPBO Program Coordinator Emma Buck.

“We can see who’s doing better than others and who needs our help more.”

Game birds are also part of the process says Evans, providing data which allows organizations including the Canadian Wildlife Service to set hunter quotas based on based on hard science which maintain healthy, sustainable populations.

“I think most hunters are in support of this,” said Evans.

Buck’s affinity for things avian and decade-long working relationship with the LPBO’s parent organization Birds Canada encouraged emigration from Norfolk, England, to Norfolk, Ontario.

“I just fell in love with the wildlife and birds,” she said. “And the people are nice too.”

Bi-annual banding at the LPBO begins April 1 and runs daily from 5:10 a.m. for roughly six hours through the peak of migration to the first week of June at its three stations: Long Point Tip, Breakwater (roughly half-way out), and Old Cut, where we were this late May morning. Banding resumes mid-August and continues through until November, catching what for many birds, is a return flight.

As of mid-May over 4,000 individuals had been banded at Old Cut, moving toward a final estimated total of around 5,000. Highlights included one ‘very lost’ Scissor Tail Flycatcher, usually a habituate of Texas, as well as a healthy number of Blackburnian and Magnolia Warblers.

“Just a good mix of warblers,” said Buck.

The lateness of the season was reflected in a scarcity of birds within the LPBO mist nets, but a 9:50 a.m. run did turn up a Philadelphia Virio and a Yellow-Bellied Flycatcher. As one might suspect, the latter aerial insectivore lives on a diet of flies and beetles in its boreal and south boreal forest breeding grounds. Tough to sex (by wing length), this second-year bird weighed 11.6 grams, had a wing chord length of 64 millimetres and a fat grading of 4, around mid-range on the related scale of 0-7.

Meticulously recorded, this data would have been ultimately destined for the central USGS, a historical precedent currently thrown into question.

“There is a lot of things going on,” said Evans, concerned organizations may be in effect working in their individual ‘silos’ rather than as part of a unified, continental approach.

No one is giving up, perhaps moreso hanging in, doing their thing and hoping for change back for the better in four, potentially long years.

“We will persevere,” Evans concluded.