Tape Replaced on Chick Bands
Newly applied yellow tape to one of the female chick’s leg bands.
On Monday, May 31, biologists once again accessed the pen and nest box to replace the temporary tape that was applied to the bands on the chicks’ right legs during banding last week.
As many long term fans of Falcon Cam know, we attach colored tape to the bands to make the chicks easier to individually identify after they fledge. However, depending on the position of a perched bird or the distance at which it is being observed from, it can still be difficult to discern similar colors from one another (i.e. red tape from orange tape, or blue tape from green tape). With that being the case, we elected to use a new brand of outdoor-rated tape this year which came in a brighter selection of colors, in hopes that it would make identification of birds from a distance even easier. While monitoring the camera over the weekend, we noticed this new tape unraveling from the bands much more quickly than the brand used in previous years, which would remain in place for a few weeks before falling off.
We made the decision to access the ledge once again this morning in order to remove from the pen the tape that had come off of the bands, as well as apply fresh tape similar to that which had been successfully used in previous years. All pieces of the shed tape were recovered and the work was completed in roughly one hour. Both of the adults were observed onsite during this visit, as well as on camera following the completion of the work.
See below for the identification of each of the birds now that new tape has been applied to the bands:
Female 1 (77/AU), formerly PINK, is now RED
Female 2 (78/AU), formerly YELLOW, is now a darker shade of YELLOW
Male 1 (49/AU), formerly BLUE, is now a darker shade of BLUE
Male 2 (88/BN), formerly GREEN, is now WHITE
All chicks back in the pen after the new tape was applied. ‘White’ is visible in the gravel while ‘Blue’, ‘Red’, and ‘Yellow’ can be seen from left to right in the box.