Trapping and banding passerines with Germans on a rice field in Spain
Even Alejandro deemed the day to be crazy.
Today I trapped and banded passerines (i.e. songbirds) at La Janda with Alejandro. This was my first time mist netting and ringing birds, and what a debut experience it was for me. As with all things birding, expect the unexpected.
On the drive out to the rice fields of La Janda after a 5:30 a.m. departure, Alejandro told me there would be a German film crew with us getting footage for a documentary about the migrating birds of Gibraltar. They were here in August filming the white storks from a helicopter, so I said, Cool! How fortuitous that I decided to accompany Alejandro to La Janda. And I like Germans.
They arrived in the dark around 7:30 a.m. after we had set up the six mist nets. They filmed some amazing footage of thousands of cattle egrets, starlings, and even some white storks emerging from their roosts at the crack of dawn. I had never seen--no, heard--anything like it. A cacophony of bird songs! The sun coaxed them from their roosts in the very trees we had walked right under as we erected the mist nets just one hour prior. How did we not wake them as we fumbled around in the dark romping through the reeds banging stakes in the ground? Then the sun rose and things really heated up.
It got hot. Really hot. The German crew followed us from net to net as we extracted the birds. We loved having them there (I like the German demeanor, in general), but it slowed things down a bit.
We trapped mostly Spanish sparrows, some Reed warblers, a few Stonechats, one Bluethroat, a few Sardinian warblers, and a few Goldfinches. The crew got up close and personal with their massive camera and 600mm fixed lens at the makeshift work station by the vehicles while we banded. We were about halfway through banding our second round of birds and well on our way to our third and final round, when we heard and then saw several hundred Spanish sparrows move through the area where our three largest nets were erected in the marshy canal. Alejandro whispered, more or less to himself, "Hmm, maybe we should go take the nets down." We saw the birds, took no action, and opted instead to harbor a glimmer of hope that what we feared would not come true. But it did! Joke's on us!
When we arrived at the three nets for our last round of trapping, we were horrified to find them covered with sparrows.
So it took about two hours for the five of us--eh, mainly just Alejandro, since the Germans and I had no experience extracting these tiny birds from entangled nets--to release all of these birds. It was hot. Their bills packed a strong pinch. And there was a lot of pasty poop on our hands.
I could not have asked for a better debut experience mist netting passerines! Thank you, Alejandro, for being so calm, patient and passionate about your work, and for being such a role model and instructor for the inexperienced of us placed in a tough situation. Even Alejandro, a man with the gentlest of souls beaming warmth onto whomever he knows, a man of few words, said, "Waahow. This is crazy."
