Bird Banding Demonstration

Come visit our bird banding station! Weather permitting, the bird banders will be on the porch of the Coastal Ecology Center or under the large copper beech tree on campus ready to share their ongoing avian research with you. Learn about the data they record, and also fascinating natural history information about the birds temporarily caught in the researchers’ mist nets!

Banding will occur on Wednesday mornings from June 8 - August 17 (no banding on June 29 and August 10 though). Nets are erected and opened at dawn with set-up beginning as early as 4:30am. The banders net for a six-hour period, unless interrupted due to rain or temperatures above 80 degrees. The most opportune time to visit the bird banding demonstration is usually between 7:30 and 9:30am. 

About the Bird Banders

Patrick Keenan is Outreach Director and Wildlife Biologist at Biodiversity Research Institute in Portland, Maine, where he has worked since 2008. For nearly 20 years he has worked as a field biologist and educator with a focus on bird banding, monitoring, and conservation. In 2011, he helped to establish a bird banding station at River Point Conservation Area in West Falmouth, Maine. Following in the spirit of June Ficker, Patrick feels great privilege to be involved in continuing the long-term bird banding effort at Wells Reserve at Laudholm.

Chuck Lubelczyk started crawling through the woods at the Wells Reserve during his first field season with Maine Medical Center in 1994. Since then, he has work on studies involving birds, mice, deer, ticks, mosquitoes and invasives over many acres at the WNERR and Rachel Carson Refuge. He is proud to assist with carrying on the work of one of his mentors, June Ficker, who ran the bird banding program from 1989 to 2015.