Wild Places, Wild Birds

This blog posting has been on the back burner for quite a while, but it was such an enjoyable birding experience, it deserves posting.
Sheree’ gifted the guided experience to Scott and I. She’s good at that!
The science behind bird banding, and geotagging in general, is so exciting, so useful, so revealing. Observing for a few hours made me want to stay for a few weeks. As soon as I got home, I sent BBBS an email, volunteering my time.

This type of hands-on science, out-of-doors, with birds, is so engaging and educational. The data collection was so thorough and detailed. It was a gorgeous sunny day, but many days during the season are cold and nasty; it takes very dedicated scientists and volunteers to make this work.
In a separate location, an open area on the bald, they have a raptor banding station. That would have been a very cool activity to experience, but no such luck this day. They also capture and band owls at night.

Big Bald Banding Station (BBBS) is one of very few monitoring stations in the U.S. that band songbirds, raptors and owls. An average of ~2000 songbirds are captured, banded and safely released each autumn migration at Big Bald (click Songbirds).

The Big Bald Hawkwatch counts an average of ~3000 migrating raptors each autumn of 15 different species, counting over 43,000 birds of prey from 2004 to 2018. The raptor trapping substation lures and bands approximately 100 birds of prey of 10 different species (click Raptors).

Bird banding activities at Big Bald were initiated in 1978 by Dr. George Mayfield and Cleo Mayfield of Columbia, Tennessee.  Their passion for birds helped to establish the Big Bald Banding Station, a volunteer-staffed project which gathers data valuable for identifying trends in bird population health and serves as an environmental education resource for area students of all ages.

BBBS is located high on Little Bald Mountain at 5390 feet above sea level (1643m), inside the Appalachian Trail corridor in Cherokee National Forest, Unicoi County, Tennessee.  The banding station is located in edge habitat adjacent to managed grassy bald, including perennial shrubs, native heath thickets, and northern hardwood forest type. On clear days, the wide open vistas present expansive views of 360 degrees, with the Black mountain range and Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak in the eastern United States, 20 miles to the southeast.

Big Bald Mountain has been designated as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) and the National Audubon Society’s Important Bird Area program. Big Bald is part of the Southern Blue Ridge IBA, which includes several high altitude sites such as Roan Mountain, Unaka Mountain and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This north-south corridor provides migratory, breeding, and wintering habitat for numerous bird species.