Banding studies
The study of living birds by the banding method, whereby great numbers of individuals are marked with numbered aluminum leg rings, has come to be recognized as a most accurate means of ornithological research. Since 1920, banding work in North America has been under the direction of the Fish and Wildlife Service in cooperation with the Dominion Wildlife Service of Canada. Every year voluntary cooperators, working under permit, place bands on thousands of birds, game and nongame, large and small, migratory and nonmigratory, each band carrying a serial number and the legend, NOTIFY FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE, WASHINGTON, D. C., or on the smaller sizes an abbreviation thereof. When a banded bird is reported from a second locality, a definite fact relative to its movements becomes known, and a study of many cases of this nature develops more and more complete knowledge of the details of migration.
The records of banded birds are also yielding other pertinent information relative to their migrations, such as the exact dates of arrival and departure of individuals, the length of time that different birds pause on their migratory journeys to feed and rest, the relation between weather conditions and the starting times for migration, the rates of travel of individual birds, the degree of regularity with which birds return to the exact summer or winter quarters used in former years, and many other details that could be learned in no other manner. Banding stations that are operated systematically throughout the year, therefore, are supplying much information concerning the movements of migratory birds that heretofore could only be surmised. (See Appendix II, p. 92 for instructions on reporting the recovery of banded birds.)