LANEVILLE - When the first hints of autumn chill can be felt in the air at the 4,000-foot-high eastern edge of the Dolly Sods plateau, a dedicated group of birders from across the nation gather here to renew a labor of love begun a half-century ago.
LANEVILLE - When the first hints of autumn chill can be felt in the air at the 4,000-foot-high eastern edge of the Dolly Sods plateau, a dedicated group of birders from across the nation gather here to renew a labor of love begun a half-century ago.
Thermal waves produced by winds plummeting off the Allegheny Front, as the eastern edge of the plateau is known, have long made this mountaintop overlooking the South Branch Valley a major flyway for migrating hawks. Since the early 1950s, members of the Wheeling-based Brooks Bird Club have come here to count southbound birds of prey.
It was during those fall hawk-watching events that club members noticed a large number of migrating songbirds passing through with the hawks.
Aware that Operation Recovery, a new bird population and distribution study had begun at banding stations along the Atlantic Coast under the sponsorship of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, club member Ralph Bell asked state and federal wildlife officials if establishing an inland banding station on the Allegheny Front would be a worthwhile addition.
Chandler Robbins, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, and Charles Handley, then the head of the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, greeted the idea with enthusiasm. In fact, Handley offered to supply mist nets for the project and drive up from Charleston to take part.
Bell, a Greene County, Pa., tree farmer and one of the few licensed bird banders in the region, arrived at Red Creek Cabin on Dolly Sods, now the site of the Monongahela National Forest's Red Creek Campground, on Sept. 17, 1958. Among those joining him for the four-day inaugural banding season of what was to become the Allegheny Front Migration Observatory were Handley, Richard Hessler of Morgantown and George Hall, a chemistry professor at WVU.
After putting up four nets the following wet and windy morning, the birders managed to capture, band and release five songbirds: a rufous-sided tohee, a Nashville warbler, a Wilson's warbler, a catbird and a brown thrasher. A total of 54 birds representing 19 species were captured that first season.
Since then, the small army of volunteers at the Allegheny Front Migration Observatory (AFMO) has extended the banding season to run from mid-August through late October, and has captured, banded and released more than 220,000 birds representing 115 species. AFMO is now one of the nation's busiest and longest-running bird banding stations.
"This year, we started on Aug. 16, and things have been kind of slow until yesterday, when we had our first flight of more than 100 birds," said Florida resident Joan Bell Pattison, Ralph Bell's daughter, and one of two banders and five other volunteers working at the station on a recent morning.
Work at AFMO begins a half hour before sunrise, when volunteers walk from Red Creek Campground across Forest Road 75 and put up a series of nets at the top of a ravine overlooking the South Branch Valley.
Soon, migrating songbirds begin arriving from a long night of flying, seeking a place to rest and feed in the trees and brush of Dolly Sods. Volunteers carefully pluck them from the mist nets and carry them in paper bags to the banding station - an open-fronted booth with a workbench, chairs and an assortment of tools, guidebooks, drinks and snacks.
There, volunteers measure wing size and feel ridge patterns on the birds' skulls to determine approximate age, and record each bird's species and gender.
This year, as part of a national study coordinated by UCLA, volunteers also collect viral swabs and feather material from a small percentage of the birds they capture to test for the presence of avian flu.
After the data is recorded, the captured birds are banded, given a sip of Pedia Light to give them an electrolytic boost, and released to continue their journey through a small side door in the side of the banding booth.
Most of the birds banded at the station are songbirds, with warblers accounting for about one-third of all captures. Songbirds migrating along the Allegheny Front are well traveled, nesting for the most part in Canada, and wintering in Mexico, Central America or South America. During the fall migration, some fly 200 or more miles in a single night.
Although nearly a quarter-million birds have been banded here during the past 50 years, only about 50 birds banded at AFMO have been recaptured, or found dead and reported, elsewhere.
However, such "foreign recaptures" include some amazing travelogues.
LANEVILLE - When the first hints of autumn chill can be felt in the air at the 4,000-foot-high eastern edge of the Dolly Sods plateau, a dedicated group of birders from across the nation gather here to renew a labor of love begun a half-century ago.
Thermal waves produced by winds plummeting off the Allegheny Front, as the eastern edge of the plateau is known, have long made this mountaintop overlooking the South Branch Valley a major flyway for migrating hawks. Since the early 1950s, members of the Wheeling-based Brooks Bird Club have come here to count southbound birds of prey.
It was during those fall hawk-watching events that club members noticed a large number of migrating songbirds passing through with the hawks.
Aware that Operation Recovery, a new bird population and distribution study had begun at banding stations along the Atlantic Coast under the sponsorship of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, club member Ralph Bell asked state and federal wildlife officials if establishing an inland banding station on the Allegheny Front would be a worthwhile addition.
Chandler Robbins, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, and Charles Handley, then the head of the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, greeted the idea with enthusiasm. In fact, Handley offered to supply mist nets for the project and drive up from Charleston to take part.
Bell, a Greene County, Pa., tree farmer and one of the few licensed bird banders in the region, arrived at Red Creek Cabin on Dolly Sods, now the site of the Monongahela National Forest's Red Creek Campground, on Sept. 17, 1958. Among those joining him for the four-day inaugural banding season of what was to become the Allegheny Front Migration Observatory were Handley, Richard Hessler of Morgantown and George Hall, a chemistry professor at WVU.
After putting up four nets the following wet and windy morning, the birders managed to capture, band and release five songbirds: a rufous-sided tohee, a Nashville warbler, a Wilson's warbler, a catbird and a brown thrasher. A total of 54 birds representing 19 species were captured that first season.
Since then, the small army of volunteers at the Allegheny Front Migration Observatory (AFMO) has extended the banding season to run from mid-August through late October, and has captured, banded and released more than 220,000 birds representing 115 species. AFMO is now one of the nation's busiest and longest-running bird banding stations.
"This year, we started on Aug. 16, and things have been kind of slow until yesterday, when we had our first flight of more than 100 birds," said Florida resident Joan Bell Pattison, Ralph Bell's daughter, and one of two banders and five other volunteers working at the station on a recent morning.
Work at AFMO begins a half hour before sunrise, when volunteers walk from Red Creek Campground across Forest Road 75 and put up a series of nets at the top of a ravine overlooking the South Branch Valley.
Soon, migrating songbirds begin arriving from a long night of flying, seeking a place to rest and feed in the trees and brush of Dolly Sods. Volunteers carefully pluck them from the mist nets and carry them in paper bags to the banding station - an open-fronted booth with a workbench, chairs and an assortment of tools, guidebooks, drinks and snacks.
There, volunteers measure wing size and feel ridge patterns on the birds' skulls to determine approximate age, and record each bird's species and gender.
This year, as part of a national study coordinated by UCLA, volunteers also collect viral swabs and feather material from a small percentage of the birds they capture to test for the presence of avian flu.
After the data is recorded, the captured birds are banded, given a sip of Pedia Light to give them an electrolytic boost, and released to continue their journey through a small side door in the side of the banding booth.
Most of the birds banded at the station are songbirds, with warblers accounting for about one-third of all captures. Songbirds migrating along the Allegheny Front are well traveled, nesting for the most part in Canada, and wintering in Mexico, Central America or South America. During the fall migration, some fly 200 or more miles in a single night.
Although nearly a quarter-million birds have been banded here during the past 50 years, only about 50 birds banded at AFMO have been recaptured, or found dead and reported, elsewhere.
However, such "foreign recaptures" include some amazing travelogues.
For instance, a hermit thrush captured and banded here in October 1995 was caught again at a bird banding station near Yakutat, Alaska, in September 1999. A yellow subspecies of the palm warbler captured at AFMO in October 1995 was found dead in April 2000 after it collided with a tower of the World Trade Center in New York. A blackpoll warbler banded here in September 1976 died in May the following year when it flew into a window of a home in Kalispell, Mont. A ruby-crowned kinglet banded here on Oct. 13 last year turned up 35 days later at a backyard suet feeder in Slidell, La.
Other songbirds with AFMO bands have been found in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico and Quebec.
The oldest-known junco has been a repeat visitor to the AFMO banding bench. The junco was first captured and banded here in August 1991, then turned up in AFMO nets several more times during the '90s, before being recaptured here three times in 2001. Since the bird was an adult when it was first captured, its age at its last recapture was at least 11 years and 4 months. Data on the bird collected here led the U.S. Geological Service's Patuxent Wildlife Research Center to confirm that the junco had set a longevity record for the species.
In addition to netting and banding birds, volunteers here scan the skies for several bird and insect species flying over the nets. They include blue jays, ruby-throated hummingbirds, American goldfinches, monarch butterflies and dragonflies.
Some years, very few blue jays migrate south, possibly because of good mast crop conditions in their breeding area. In 1996, for instance only 45 blue jays were seen flying over the station all season long. In other years, the migration is massive. In 1999, 18,706 blue jays overflew the station, with 8,297 of them counted in a single day.
Last year produced the biggest single-day count for migrating monarch butterflies since AFMO volunteers began keeping flyover counts in 1990. On Sept. 13, 2007, 2,625 monarchs were seen winging their way toward Mexico over Dolly Sods.
Although the AFMO is not directly affiliated with any birding organization, most volunteers are members of the Brooks Bird Club. Many volunteers have spent part of their autumns on Dolly Sods for decades.
An avid camper, Fred McCullough of Pittsburgh visited the AFMO site while on a family camping trip to Dolly Sods 12 years ago. On a recent weekday, he spent the morning removing birds from the nets and carrying them to the banding station, where his wife, Carol, was banding.
"We met Ralph Bell here and saw what he and the people here were doing, and we've been back every year since," said McCullough. "We're here for two months in a tent. It's a big time commitment, but we like being here. It's a great place to be in the fall."
Over the years, thousands of visitors have observed work being done at the AFMO. Many were already here to hike and camp in Dolly Sods and came across the banding operation while camping at Red Creek Campground. Several school and birding groups make annual pilgrimages to the Allegheny Front to observe the banding operation.
The netting and banding work usually ends at about noon, giving volunteers time to head back to the campground for lunch.
"Then we put our records into the computer, and if the weather's right, come back and count our flyovers," said Pattison.
Volunteers band more than 6,000 birds in an average year, sometimes handling more than 900 birds in a single day. The most commonly caught species are black-throated blue warblers, black-throated green warblers and Tennessee warblers.
Volunteers in AFMO's early years often were serenaded by the moos of cattle that ranged across northern Dolly Sods in the 1950s and early '60s, but the yipping of coyotes frequently is heard by those taking part in the 51st annual banding operation.
This year's volunteer crew will include AFMO founder Ralph Bell.
Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelham...@wvgazette.com">rsteelham...@wvgazette.com or 348-5169.
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