Tag Archives: Banding

Falcons at Great Spirit Bluff: reading and reporting peregrine falcon band numbers

January 22: Unknown falcon at Great Spirit Bluff

We saw two falcons at Great Spirit Bluff over the weekend: an unbanded female and a banded black/red male. We don’t know who they were, although the black/red male wasn’t Newman. Did they originate north of Great Spirit Bluff or wander up from La Crosse, a little over five miles downstream? Without band numbers, we can’t know for sure, but eBird can help us explore wintering peregrines in La Crosse! Ebird Reports Between 2002 and 2021, bird watchers reported fifteen

2021 Falcon Banding Report!

John Howe and friend on Xcel Energy's Monticello stack in Monticello, MN.

This year, we banded 80 falcons at 29 sites in four states: a record for us! 11 sites were on cliffs, nine were at power plants, four were at grain mills, four were on buildings in the cities of Duluth, MN; La Crosse, WI; Dubuque, IA; and Peoria, IL and one was on a water tower at 3M! Want to learn more about our falcon banding work? Follow the link to our 2021 Banding Report: https://raptorresource.org/raptorresource/pdf/2021BandingReport.pdf

Banding Birds: How We Band and How to Report Bands

Banding tools for nestling peregrine falcons

We are sometimes asked why we band birds. Banding birds provides an invaluable way to study their life histories and chart changes in bird populations, including changes in range, population numbers, and migratory behaviors. Bands do not hurt birds or impact their individual or reproductive success. There are a number of different ways to band or mark birds. We use two leg bands on peregrine falcons: an aluminum leg band on the right leg and a color band on the

Banding Birds: A Brief History

Falcon Tom from Xcel Sherco, 2019

We sometimes get asked why we band birds. Bird banding allows us to study the movement, survival, and behavior of the birds we band, and get life histories for at least some of the birds we watch. Bird banding has helped researchers gather information on mortality rates, dispersal patterns, migration, behavior, social structure, and seasonal and long-term population trends. It allows us to track individual peregrine falcons, giving us an intimate look at how a species behaves as it recovers,