Bird Banding Workshop

In August we held our first bird banding workshop in the reserve. We had organized the course together with our partner Aves y Conservación and with the help of our sponsors BirdLife International and EcoMinga, we were able to offer the course to 17 Ecuadorian students at a very low cost. Our international team of instructors was made up of Juan Pablo (Chespi) Elizondo from Costa Rica Bird Observatories, Manuel Grosselet from Tierra de Aves in Mexico, Holly Garrod (Third Millenium Alliance) and me. We spent five mornings in the field at four different banding stations where each instructor taught a group of four to five students. All in all we caught 351 individuals of 85 different species! In the afternoons we had theoretical lectures on the ethics of bird banding, techniques and molt analysis. Overall the course was a great success and we are looking forward to train more students in the future. Next year we have already planned to offer our first bander certification in Ecuador. A huge thank you to our course assistant Georgita Ruiz from Tierra de Aves who documented our work with her camera.