Service personnel from the Marquette Biological Station partnered with the Seney National Wildlife Refuge in Michigan and presented “Get Banded” to over 100 Girl and Boy Scouts as part of Scout Activity Day 2007 at the refuge.

Through hands-on activities scouts learned how the bird banding program provides important information about birds. This information is useful in both research and management projects and helps engage children in the natural world.

The identification of birds makes possible studies of dispersal and migration, behavior and social structure, life-span and survival rate, reproductive success and population growth. To demonstrate some of the data collected during typical banding activities, scouts tossed small artificial birds into a mist net and removed them with great care, and then measurements were taken of each scout that included arm and leg length, total height, head circumference, and weight.

Finally, each scout was fitted with a plastic wrist band with there own unique band number. The Service delivers a program of integrated sea lamprey control in the U.S. waters of the Great Lakes as a contracted agent of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.

(Contact Gregg Baldwin at 906-226-1211).