Wildlife Service in cooperation with the Canadian Wildlife Service. 

 Every year professional biologists and voluntary cooperators, 

 working under permit, place bands on thousands of birds, game and 

 nongame, large and small, migratory and nonmigratory, with each 

 band carrying a serial number and the legend, NOTIFY FISH AND 

 WILDLIFE SERVICE, WASHINGTON, D.C., or on the smaller 

 sizes, an abbreviation. When a banded bird is reported from a second 

 locality, a definite fact relative to its movements becomes known, and 

 a study of many such cases develops more and more complete 

 knowledge of the details of migration. 



The records of banded birds are also yielding other pertinent 

 information relative to their migrations such as arrival and 

 departure dates, the length of time different birds pause on their 

 migratory journeys to feed and rest, the relation between weather 

 conditions and starting times for migration, the rates of travel for 

 individual birds, the degree of regularity with which individual 

 birds return to the summer or winter quarters used in former years, 

 and many other details. Many banding stations are operated 

 systematically throughout the year and supply much information 

 concerning the movements of migratory birds that heretofore could 

 only be surmised. The most informative banding studies are those 

 where particular populations of birds are purposely banded to 

 produce certain types of information when they are recovered. 

 Examples of such planned banding are the extensive marking of 

 specific populations of ducks and geese on their breeding grounds by 

 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife 

 Service, as well as in "Operation Recovery," the cooperative program 

 of banding small landbirds along the Atlantic Coast (Baird et al. 

 1958). When these banded birds are recovered, information 

 concerning movements of specific populations or the vulnerability to 

 hunting is gained. Colored leg bands, neck collars, or streamers can 

 be used to identify populations or specific individuals, and birds 

 marked with easily observed tags can be studied without having to 

 kill or recapture individuals, thus making it a particularly useful 

 technique. 



We have learned about the migratory habits of some species 

 through banding, but the method does have shortcomings. If one 

 wishes to study the migration of a particular species through 

 banding, the band must be encountered again at some later date. If 

 the species is hunted, such as ducks or geese, the number of returns 

 per 100 birds banded is considerably greater than if one must rely on 

 a bird being retrapped, found dead, etc. For example, in mallards 

 banded throughout North America the average number of bands 

 returned the first year is about 12 percent. In most species that are 

 not hunted, less than 1 percent of the bands are ever seen again. 



In 1935, Lincoln commented that, with enough banding, some of 

 the winter ranges and migration routes of more poorly understood 

 species would become better known. A case in point is the chimney 

 swift, a common bird in the eastern United States. This is a 



