Foreign Recapture!
One of the benefits of the internet is that information is shared so much quicker than in the past. Just this past Friday, 27 April, a Swainson's Thrush was netted at a banding station in Veracruz, Mexico. Upon examining it, the banders found that it wore a Bird Banding Laboratory (BBL) band. They contacted the BBL in Patuxent and discovered that it was banded at Erie Bluffs State Park in September 2009, as a hatch-year (HY) bird.
Straight-line distance from Erie Bluffs SP, PA to Santa Alejandrina de Minatitlán, Veracruz, México:
1,870 miles/3,008 km
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The station in Veracruz bands huge numbers of birds. Many of them are neotropical migrants that breed in the USA and Canada, illustrating the need for international cooperation when working to protect "our" birds. To learn more about anillamiento de aves (bird banding) in Mexico, visit their site here.
But wait, there's more!
Swainson's Thrushes winter as far south as Argentina, so this bird may have flown from its breeding grounds in Canada all the way to Peru or Bolivia (a round-trip distance of 10,000 miles/ 16,000 km) three times. The BBL's oldest Swainson's Thrush was recaptured at the age of 12, so a lucky Swainson's Thrush may migrate well over 100,000 miles/160,000 km during its life.
If you want to learn more about this species, a good web site to visit is Cornell Lab's "All About Birds". Their Swainson's Thrush page is here.
As for today's banding, rain and mist kept me from setting nets. Perhaps tomorrow will be better.
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