Junco 2811- 092295 Comes back!

A "baby" Junco

Today at Alaska Songbird Institute's banding station, we caught a slate-colored junco that had already been banded. That’s not such a rare event. Birds often spend a few days at Creamer’s Field resting and eating in preparation for migration. When we initially catch it, the bird gets an aluminum band with a 4 number prefix and unique 7 number sequence attached to its leg. During its time at Creamer’s, the bird might get caught in the mist nets again while it forages and travels through the refuge. This junco’s band number was 2811- 092295. Its band looked old and the band number wasn’t in our 2020 data. With mounting excitement, we realized that this bird had been banded elsewhere, or at the ASI station in previous years. A data search revealed that junco 2811- 092295 was banded at Creamer’s Field in August of 2019. At that time, the bird was recently hatched and we couldn’t determine gender by its plumage. Today, we could tell that this bird was an adult female. What else can we tell from her band? We know that this tiny bird survived the round-trip migration to her wintering grounds somewhere in the Midwest, and back again. We can guess that this summer she found a mate and successfully raised her first brood of nestlings on or near Creamer’s Refuge. We hope we’ll catch her again next year and be able to read another chapter of her life story!

~Laurel