Take a few extra moments to scan through that flock of shorebirds and seabirds when you’re next at the beach and look carefully at their legs. If you see colored bands or a silver band on a bird’s legs, take a photo or grab a pencil and paper and write it down: date, beach location, your name, and bird species. Write down upper and lower colors on the bird’s right and left legs separately. Each bird’s journey from the place where it was banded to where you record it on the beach tells an important story. And each story matters – for the birds’ long term survival and for the biologists who are learning from reported sightings.

Audubon volunteers and bird stewards with many coastal program record and report banded birds during bird surveys and while monitoring nesting activities. We often have people ask: “Who’s banding coastal birds in Florida?”

So here it is ---

• Florida Park Service biologists have banded Snowy Plovers in the Florida Panhandle for at least three years.  Most birds are banded as chicks a few days after hatching. They wander widely along the Gulf Coast and have been spotted in fall, winter, and spring as far south as Fort Myers Beach but mostly return to the panhandle during nesting seasons.

• Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission research biologists began banding American Oystercatcher chicks this year at several locations along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of Florida. The banded birds might remain close to their hatching locations but they could be found anywhere in the state, on either coast, on beaches or offshore islands. Florida-banded birds have red bands with white letters – both the color and letters are important to record when reporting them because Florida coasts are the wintering grounds of American Oystercatchers from the Atlantic coast as far north as New Jersey and Massachusetts! Each state uses a different color band and lettering.

• Audubon staff, an Eckerd College professor, and Audubon chapter members have banded almost 1000 Least Tern chicks at rooftop colonies in Pinellas County in the past four years.  Color-banded terns can be any age now and may have 1-3 color bands but no more than 2 on one leg. Banded birds have been found in rooftop nesting colonies and on the floating rafts at Fort Desoto County Park. On Gulf beaches, they have been found as far north as Anclote Key in Pasco County and as far south as Fort Myers Beach. They are “possible anywhere”.

• Near Florida, and sometimes seen in Florida, are Wilson’s Plovers banded on Georgia’s coastal islands by a graduate student from Georgia Southern University. Chicks were banded for the first time this year on Cumberland Island and some were seen on the northeast Florida coast.

In addition to these mostly Florida-banded birds, you can look for color bands and colored leg flags with 3 numbers and letters on Piping Plovers, Red Knots, Sanderlings, Ruddy Turnstones, and Sandwich Terns. And there may be others from time to time!

Report banded bird sightings to www.bandedbirds.org