Nebraska Game and Parks and the Audubon Society are offering a free webinar tonight on bird banding research in the Panhandle.
The webinar, hosted by the Audubon Society, begins at 6:00 MT. Register for free at bit.ly/32hGOVC.
Game and Parks has joined forces with the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies to do bird banding each fall for more than a decade at Chadron State Park and the Wildcat Hills State Recreation Area south of Gering.
Bird banding has been used to study wild birds since the late 1800 and the Bird Conservancy has banded more than 100,000 birds across Nebraska and Colorado over the past 3 decades.
Data from the 2 Panhandle sites, funded by the Nebraska Environmental Trust, has greatly increased the understanding of migratory routes and timings, the range limits of species, average lifespans, and how all that may be changing over time.
The webinar leaders are Colin Woolley, banding coordinator for the Bird Conservancy, and Delanie Bruce, Nebraska wildlife education coordinator for both the Conservancy and Game and Parks.
One topic to be covered is how they went from banding 190 birds last season to more than 1,000 birds this season at Wildcat Hills, a priority landscape for conservation based on at-risk species found there.