SIGHTINGS OF SIX OF OUR BANDED BIRDS THIS WINTER IN FLORIDA29 Jun 09

Six of our banded birds were sighted by our Florida friends this past winter! Although that doesn’t sound like a lot of banded birds, it is a great start for our first winter of taking data from Florida. I had previously mentioned our friend in Stuart, Florida, who noticed her green bird was banded only after she had blown up photos she had taken of it. She was able to report sixteen sightings of that banded bird between late January and the middle of March! We also received sighting reports from Ft. Meyers, Florida, of a female we had banded in Foley Beach, SC, and two other birds that had been banded in 2007 and 2006, respectively. We are banding a lot of birds this summer, so we hope they will be spotted and reported by our Florida friends too. Thanks for keeping an eye out for those bands! I have been putting together some photo albums on our Flickr site, including one set of banded birds. I thought it might help get your eye trained to look for those colorful “bracelets” on your birds. I have also rearranged the sets so that the nest photos, juveniles and photos of the PBOT staff banding birds are easy to find. Take a look -- and don’t miss the “Best of All” set, which is a selection of my favorite photos submitted by you! Thanks! Leah