Video
MAPS Bird Banding in Glacier: Missed Connections
Descriptive Transcript
[Narrator]:Birds can tell us a lot about what's happening with the environment.
[Audio description: A brown and gray songbird hops around on the forest floor, picking up seeds with its beak.]
[Narrator]:Each species evolved to live in specific habitats suited to certain foods and temperature ranges.
[Audio description: Timelapse footage of a nest of baby birds. The birds breathe and blink and stand with their mouths gaping when the adult arrives with food.]
[Narrator]:Key parts of their lives, like breeding and migration, are driven by environmental cues.
[Audio description: A black-and-white patterned woodpecker hops around on the trunk of a tree, pecking at the bark.]
[Narrator]:Changes in typical bird behavior population and range can be reflections of environmental problems.
[Audio description: Fingers point at diagrams of bird skulls in a textbook. A volunteer records data on a paper data sheet.]
[Narrator]:Birds are also easy to identify and count.
[Narrator]:People have been recording detailed observations about them for a long time, leaving a rich historical record.
[Audio description: Closeup of a sparrow's head poking out between the fingers of a handler. It has shaggy-looking brown head feathers and a pointy, pink-gray beak.]
[Narrator]:Catching and banding birds in the park is part of the MAPS program-Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship, which is a standardized way to track the health of bird populations, especially in response to climate change.
[Audio description: Bird bander holds a small songbird while using special pliers to fit it with a metal leg band. Two other birds have their tail feathers inspected and wings measured.]
[Audio description: Biologists and volunteers gathered around a bird bander, take notes and inspect the bird.]
[Narrator]:Data from MAPS stations across the continent help biologists piece together the effects of weather, climate change and habitat loss on bird populations
[Audio description: The bander weighs a bird in a cloth bag and jots down the number.]
[Narrator]:Over the last 35 years, MAPS data from the US and Canada have been used in almost 250 scientific studies.
[Audio description: Timelapse of evening clouds and sunset at a mountain lake.]
[Narrator]:A recent study using MAPS data found that spring is occurring earlier than in past decades, and birds aren't responding quickly enough to this shift in timing.
[Audio description: Cut to the energetic little bird from earlier, hopping around collecting food.]
[Audio description: A wildlife biologist holds a beautiful gray and yellow bird in her hands and smiles as she lets it go.]
[Narrator]:MAPS helps us see what's happening with birds on a large scale, so that we may value what we already have and fight to protect it.
Description
How much is a bird in the hand worth?
Banding birds in Glacier National Park is part of the MAPS program – Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship.
A recent study using MAPS data found that spring is occurring earlier than in past decades and birds aren't responding quickly enough to this shift in timing.
These research efforts help us see what’s happening with birds on a continent-wide scale—so that we may value what we already have, and fight to protect it.
Duration
1 minute, 22 seconds
Credit
NPS / Renata Harrison & Kylie Caesar
Date Created
09/08/2024
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