it 
i 
| 
THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 
cia ae ee << 
‘THE SPARROW THAT LIVED FOR 19 YEARS® 
(Chapter No. 2] 
, 
Being An Extraordinary Account of How One Digit 
| 
Changed a Brown-headed Cowbird in Maryland in ‘63 
aE ¢ ONS 
Into a 19-year-old White-throated Sparrow. 
“I am writing with reference is the article “The Sparrow That Lived 
19 Years” which was published in the December 1968 issue of THE AU 
BON BULLETIN (pp. 28-30). In this article, Miss M. B. Huxford rey 
the recovery of a 19-year-old white-throated sparrow which was bar 
by Miss G. Stewart and recovered by Mrs. A. Labriola. 
“After checking our files, I find that both the band number publis 
in THE AUDUBON BULLETIN (21-85197) and the band number proce: 
by the Banding Laboratory (42-185197) are in error. The bird found 
Mrs. Labriola’s son was actually wearing Band Number 62-185197e 
unfortunate chain of events began when one of my clerical staff misin 
preted the first digit of the band number reported by Mrs. Labriola 
entered the wrong band number into the work sheet which is fed to 
computer. This simple misinterpretation of one digit changed a bro 
headed cowbird banded in Denton, Maryland, in 1963 into a 19-year. 
white-throated sparrow! 
“Despite a rather elaborate system of human and machine checks | 
double checks designed to catch errors such as this, there is still a sn 
percentage (slightly less than one per cent) of miscoded band numk 
which get through. After Miss Stewart received our notification of 
recovery of “her” band, she wrote to Mrs. Labriola to verify the infor: 
tion. Since Mrs. Labriola had not identified the bird found by her son, : 
since she had forwarded the band to the Bird Banding Laboratory, 
simply accepted the information and verified that the banded bird had bi 
found in her yard. At this point, Miss Huxford and Miss Stewart assun 
the recovery was correct and sent the article to you for publication. 
“This case points out very graphically why we request all banders 
verify unusual recoveries with the Banding Laboratory prior to publicati 
Approximately one and a half million new eight- and nine-digit numb 
are being placed on birds and about 100,000 of these are being recovel 
each year. To err is human, and there are a great many humans anc 
great many chances for errors to occur from the time a bird is banc 
until the final records are produced for the recovery. It is for this reas 
that we strongly stress: ; 
“When in doubi, 
Check ii out!” 
“I would appreciate it if LAS would publish a brief note of retraction 
this record. A great many ornithologists are interested in the longevity 
birds and this record may be cited in future literature.” 
% 
—Ear! B. Baysinger, Chief 
Bird Banding Laboratory 
Bureau of Sport Fisheries & Wildl 
Migratory Bird Populations S#ati 
Laurel, Maryland 
