The Story of Uncle Sam

It's hard enough to build connections with other humans, much less other species. But this mourning dove and I have a connection.

This is Uncle Sam, a mourning dove, chilling in our back yard on a hot July evening.

Did you notice the bling? Did you think, “Dang, what are the odds of having a banded mourning dove hanging out in your back yard?”

For Hank and me, the odds are quite high, because I band doves in our back yard as a volunteer for the State of California.

California is such a big state that the state has to band huge numbers of doves to get the population data needed to set hunting limits. The Department of Fish and Wildlife doesn’t have the staff to meet that need, so they deploy volunteer banders across the state. I’m one of them.

Our “lawn,” which goes dry in the summer, has always been popular with doves because they like open, relatively bare ground. When you throw big piles of bait in the yard even for just two months of the year, that really encourages fidelity to the location. That means many of the doves I band periodically come back, so we often see banded doves in the yard.

I have banded 101 doves since I started volunteering in 2010, and of those, I’ve caught 15 at least one more time, sometimes days later, but occasionally in subsequent years.

One of my favorite trap-loving birds was a male I trapped in my first year, when he was young of the year. I banded him on July 14, trapped him again the next day, and then again two days later. The following year, I trapped him again on July 19. And I got word later that he was trapped three days after that by another volunteer bander.

In Palm Springs.

That’s 500 miles away.

So, just because they’re repeat visitors to our yard doesn’t mean they’re not still migratory. They probably have favorite stops all over the state, which is pretty freakin’ cool!

When life started getting extra busy a few years ago, I took a three-year break from banding, which meant the number of banded birds we were seeing in our yard was dwindling. Last year, when I was able to resume banding, we were down to just one showing up regularly, a very handsome male.

If I was the one who’d banded him, he had to be at least three years old, which is pretty good, given that their average lifespan is about two years.

But the only way I’d know would be to get him in the trap.

He was a crafty bugger and resisted the allure of that yummy safflower for weeks and weeks, until the evening of August 4, when Hank told me he was in the trap.

My hands were shaking so hard that I asked Hank to come out with me so I could read the band number to him - I didn’t want to lose the bird trying to write down all those digits myself.

I went out, scooped the bird out of the trap, read the number to Hank, quickly noted the other data the state needs, and released him. I didn’t even pause for a selfie, because the goal is to avoid stressing them out.

Then I scoured the list of birds I’d banded to see if he was one of my guys.

He was! I had I banded him a whopping six years earlier. Even more exciting was that I remembered our first encounter vividly.

It was July 4, 2015, and I was banding in the front yard at the time. I had bait in the trap, but it was not “set,” so birds could walk in and out freely. I only set the trap when I can monitor it closely, because it periodically attracts the interest of cats. If I’m going to make birds vulnerable by putting out irresistible bait, I’m obligated to protect them from harm by remaining vigilant.

At 7 p.m., I happened to look out the front window and see a young-of-the-year dove in the trap, right as a woman was walking down the sidewalk - just a couple yards from the trap - toward a 4th of July party at our neighbor’s house.

The dove tried to take off, but ran smack into the top of the cage. Then, too panicked to find the exit, it began flapping violently against one corner of the cage to get away from the woman.

The woman started walking toward the trap, which wasn’t good. When you approach the trap, the procedure is to throw a dark sheet over it to calm the bird down; without that sheet, the bird would go into a frenzy and really bloody itself against the wire cage.

I grabbed my banding gear, flew out of the house, and hissed at the woman to back away from the trap as I rushed to throw a sheet over it. She demanded to know what I was doing. I told her it was research, and I had a permit, and mercifully she left. (I found her interrogation irritating and insulting at the time, but in truth, it’s a good thing that she cared.) I banded the bird - the only dove I’ve ever caught in an un-set trap - then jotted down a note about what had gone down, and that was that.

Two years later, I trapped him again, and that’s when I determined he was a male. You can’t tell their sex when they’re young of the year.

Then, he made that glorious appearance last year.

This year, I have not trapped any already-banded birds, so I have no idea if Uncle Sam is still around. We’ve seen banded males in the yard, but they could be other birds I banded last year. There are still a few days left in the banding season, though - maybe he’ll walk into the trap one more time.

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Killing a banded bird is exciting for the hunter.

Normally we know nothing more about the birds we kill than the fact that they flew in front of us the day we shot them. But when the bird is banded, that means it was in human hands at least one other time in its life, and when you report the band at www.reportband.gov, you get to find out when and where that happened. They’ll even send you a certificate.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find your bird has a cool story - maybe it’s really old, or was banded thousands of miles away. Even if it was banded a mile away and a month ago, though, it still has a story you’re not normally privy to. Knowing it gives you a deeper appreciation of their lives - it reveals an otherwise-invisible dimension.

In return for sharing that information with you, the government gets data that they use to assess the size of bird populations, which is one of the factors that goes into setting hunting limits for migratory birds.

Trapping a banded bird, for me, is equally exciting, because it’s a personal connection that’s otherwise impossible to see. Are those just random doves on a wire out there, or is one of them a dove I once handled?

Even the possibility of connection kindles deep affinity, fondness and respect for the birds that visit our yard. It’s one more way in which our lives are intertwined.

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MORE ON BANDED DOVES

What do I love about banding?

• It’s a form of hunting, so it’s exciting - always a little endorphin hit when you see one in the trap.

• It’s non-lethal, which is a breath of fresh air. As much as I love hunting and eating doves, it’s nice to hold one that’s not bloody and limp, and to release it to go on with its life.

• I love being part of a big data-collection effort.

Have we killed banded doves?

• Hank has killed a banded dove (in Yuma, Arizona; not one of mine).

• His cat Harlequin has killed a banded dove (in our back yard, one of mine, but not during banding season - she caught it fair and square six months after I banded it).

• I have not killed a banded dove.

Where and how have my banded doves been found?

Most of the doves I’ve banded are never in human hands again, unless I recapture them. There are four exceptions:

• The Palm Springs dove I mentioned above.

• One that was hit by a car a few miles away in Fair Oaks a little over a year after I banded it (alive when found).

• One that was found injured near a bank about five miles away in Roseville, four months after I banded it.

• One that was shot by a hunter about 25 miles away just outside of Sacramento during second dove season, four months after I banded it.

Bonus story - banded hybrid duck

For a really cool band story, check out this video I made a few years back when I worked for CWA: