Every year since 1958 at the nation’s oldest, continuous bird banding station in Dolly Sods, volunteers net and band birds while they are on their migratory routes. The total number of birds banded at the station now reaches close to 300,000.
In 1958, with support from West Virginia Department of Natural Resources, Ralph Bell founded the station as well as the organization that continues to run it to this day: the Allegheny Front Migration Observatory (AFMO).
Carrying on the legacy of dedicated work, volunteers begin this year’s work by clearing brush for their net lanes. After the net lanes are cleared, poles are established that will hold the nets. Then the fun begins: netting and banding birds.
When Bell and his crew of volunteers began their work at the station, they first set up at the Red Creek cabin site, which is now the location of Red Creek Campground. “He noticed there were a lot of birds flying overhead,” Volunteer LeJay Graffious said. “So he sort of followed the trail until he got to here.”
To get to the location of the AFMO station, head directly east from the Blackbird Knob Trailhead. The unmarked trail quickly leads to a north, south lane of outcropped rocks that provides a wonderful view of the eastern mountains. The vale provides an ideal spot for netting birds.
When the birds fly at night, the west winds blow them off course. “We think they are doing a correctional flight along the Allegheny Front here,” Graffious said.
“If you notice where we are sitting, there’s like a trough that comes out on the point out there. For them, the shortest distance is to come up this trough. When they come up here, they hit the west wind, and it forces them down into the brush and trees. We’ve taken advantage of them coming down to less resistant wind, and we catch them in the net,” Graffious said.
Graffious is entering his 38th year of work with AFMO. In 1981, Graffious built the shed that operates as the banding station.
He is among 20 volunteers that help run the station from August to October. “Usually in October the weather is a little unpredictable and hunting season is coming in,” Graffious said.
The volunteers either staffing the nets or working in the banding station are predominantly from West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. They work in shifts and set up a schedule to make sure the station has enough hands throughout the weeks of work.
Volunteers tending the nets go through a rigorous training and a series of observations. Those who band the birds have to be licensed by the federal government.
The nets used to catch the birds are called mist nets. “It’s almost like a hair net consistency made out of nylon,” Graffious said. These mist nets were originally used for fishing off the coast of Japan.
Thirty six nets are stretched across the four acre stretch of net lanes. “When the birds hit the net, they fall down and the net makes a pocket. They stop abruptly, but there’s no injury to the birds,” Graffious said.
The nets are opened half an hour before sunrise. The birds fly high at night and then come down with the sunrise. Rush hour is typically from daylight until 9 a.m.
Once a bird hits the net, a netter grabs the bird in a manner that enables the bird to be safely and manageably brought over to the banding station.
Each band has a nine digit code on it that identifies the species. Wing measurements and the sex are also recorded. All the data from the AFMO station goes to the larger database at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.
All of this hard work and subsequent data gives a snapshot of the wellbeing of each species as well as the environment as a whole. “You’ve heard the phrase, ‘canary in a coal mine,'” Graffious said. “Well, knowing the number of the birds passing through also tells of the health of the environment.”
The birds that are netted are predominantly warblers and thrushes. At this point in the season birds are heading after breeding. “We’re banding a lot of birds that are coming out of the north country. This station bands more black-poll warblers than all the other stations in America combined,” Graffious said.
After breeding across the spruce belt from Alaska to Nova Scotia, the birds fly south. Some of these birds that weigh only as much as the change in your pocket fly close to half the distance of the globe during their migration route.
Black-poll warblers banded at AFMO have turned up in Alaska and Brazil. When tracking your finger from Alaska to Brazil on a map, the straight line goes right over West Virginia.
Other amazing stories regarding the travels of these birds abound. Birds banded in Dolly Sods have turned up all over: after they struck the glass of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, on an oil derrick in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the bird cage of a street peddler in the Dominican Republic.
“Then you have really strange stories,” Graffious said. “We had a guy by the name of Leon Wilson, who lived in Ona. He banded a gold finch here, went home and caught it in his yard. So you just never know.”
