June 1st – The Fat Lady Has Sung

Old adages have always interested me and, as a coach, I’ve used this one on a number of occasions when the team has fallen behind in the score and I have to remind them to keep trying. But, eventually, the final whistle sounds – the Fat Lady has sung – and the game ends.

Originally the phrase evidently referred to Wagner’s opera Gotterdammerung in the Ring Cycle when the heroine, Brunnhilde, sings a long aria at the end and then jumps into a fire. (As I don’t have a great fondness for opera, I think this might be a fitting ending.)

Anyway….this is a long-winded way of saying that the 2025 Spring banding season has come to an end. I can’t remember experiencing a more difficult and frustrating 2 months. We had long periods of lousy weather. April was mostly wet and cold and May was supposed to have been the coldest in 50 years. We kept waiting for a break which never seemed to come. The frustrating part in all this is that we had quite good coverage: 48 out of 61 possible days and many of the missed days were due to weather rather than personnel shortages.

As in other years, we ran 10 nets and in doing so racked up our second most number of net hours in our 5-year history here: 1,765. We ended up banding 549 birds (257 in April; 292 in May) – only our 3rd highest total. We handled 58 species. The banding total was achieved through perseverance, squeezing blood out of stones. Our “biggest day” (May 11th) netted only 32 birds, well below big days in other years. But the really telling stat was the number of birds banded per 100 net hours. (1 net hour = 1 12-m net open for one hour). For the season it was 24.5 birds per 100 net hours – well below other years which ranged from 33 – 58 birds. April was only 22.6 and May just a bit better at 25.9 – both well below other years.

Oh well….enough crying. That’s banding and you have to take what Mother Nature – or the Fat Lady – gives you.

But there was a very definite plus side: 60 different people put in a total of 203 “volunteer days”. The banding station was a good place to be – it was fun to be there. And I guess this is the most important thing in the long run. To celebrate Dave and Elaine Gosnell hosted a lovely end-of-season BBQ replete with home-made burgers and hot dogs and Amy’s muffins and cookies. A wonderful way to end the season for sure – because this “army” has proved that it marches on its stomach.

I’d like to extend my sincerest thanks to all those that put in the time to squeeze as much out of this season as we could. It was a job well done.

So what’s coming? We’ll take some time off. Then, in August, when Sarah returns from the West, she will start a Bobolink banding program that will run into September. Between now and then the Gosnells intend to cut the prairie meadow leaving a long swath uncut again which will make netting in it much easier. At the beginning of September we will start the regular Fall banding season which will run until around November 7th. I hope to see you there!!
Rick