Banding Coalition of the Americas

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Banding Coalition of the Americas

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BCA is an all volunteer 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization. Dedicated to avian research and public outreach. 📍Baldwin County, Alabama

10/14/2026

On January 13, 2010, our mentor and good friend Fred Dietrich banded a Rufous Hummingbird in Tallahassee, FL. 166 days later, on June 28th, that bird was recaptured by Kate McLaughlin 3,530 miles away in Chenega Bay, AK. This incredible point to point record stood for 16 years and now we’ve broken that record - twice!

The AK HumTrack project, made up of a collaboration between the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, Todd Eskelin from USFWS, and Banding Coalition of the Americas, set out on a mission to document the first tracks of Rufous Hummingbird movement on their breeding grounds at the northwestern most extent of their range. This past summer we faced considerable challenges, succeeded in some of our goals, discovered more questions than we thought we had, and uncovered some truly fascinating information about their southbound migration in the process. The video below is some of the fruits of our labor. We hope you enjoy and are as mind-blown as we are.

This project was made possible entirely through private donations made to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. AWCC was crucial in providing not only the admin work of administering these funds but housing for the BCA team and continued site access for Todd Eskelin - local ba**er and resident expert on Rufous Hummingbirds on the Kenai Peninsula. For more information on the AK HumTrack project you can visit: https://alaskawildlife.org/research/rufous-hummingbird/

In 2027, we look forward to another year of collecting valuable data with a more narrowed focus to answer very specific questions.

We’d also like to give our thanks to Cellular Tracking Technologies (our partners in HumTrack as a whole) for this incredible technology and continued support while we are in the field.

For more on HumTrack in general, you can visit: https://www.bandingcoalition.org/humtrack

To our followers, thank you for your continued support as we work diligently toward identifying crucial habitat needs for the conservation of this rapidly declining species.

**All banding and transmitter deployments are being conducted under a federally authorized Bird Banding Permit issued by the U.S. Geological Survey's BBL.

10/10/2026

We hope everyone faired well in this recent hurricane! Our crew are all in one piece and made it home safely.

Here is your session wrap up:
First we’d like to express our gratitude to this session’s sponsors - Visit Alabama's Beaches, Nashville Zoo, Nashville AAZK, and one other sponsor who wished to remain anonymous. Their financial support went a very long way to make this incredible week to a reality as it takes a considerable amount of funding to make these events happen. These sponsorships helped cover volunteer housing, equipment costs, etc. In addition we’d like to thank all of our visitors and Patrons for their continued support both monetary and otherwise. Lastly, many thanks to the Fort Morgan State Historic Site for being remarkable hosts and allowing us to continue our important work on their grounds.

This session posed significant challenges in terms of weather. Our first 2 days were almost a total loss due to rain. We also lost our last two days thanks to Hurricane Isaias. This loss of time greatly affected our visitor numbers though 165 of you braved the weather to come see us. That also means that for the first time since our inception as a nonprofit, we had more birds than people! While these public events are an excellent educational outreach opportunity for us, it also affords us the ability to collect crucial information about birds moving through the area immediately prior to tropical systems like Isaias.

We banded 342 individuals of 44 species with Swainson’s Thrush taking the top spot. I’ve included our full species breakdown in the photos. Species diversity this week far surpassed our expectations and made for an unforgettable session regardless of the weather. Enjoy our favorite photos from this session!

We look forward to seeing everyone at our Spring Bird Banding on Dauphin Island co-hosted with Dauphin Island Bird Sanctuaries.

**All banding and transmitter deployments are being conducted under a federally authorized Bird Banding Permit issued by the U.S. Geological Survey's BBL.

10/08/2026

Good morning everyone! This is your Thursday morning update. With the further storm development and word from the Fort, this will be our last day. We will finish out today but start a slow closing process beginning at 12:00. By 3:00 we will be in full shut down mode.

This evening, we will give you our final numbers and weekly wrap up. Thanks a million for being flexible with us as conditions constantly changed.

We have had a few birds this morning though it seems that most of the birds that were here yesterday took off last night.

**All banding and transmitter deployments are being conducted under a federally authorized Bird Banding Permit issued by the U.S. Geological Survey's BBL.

10/08/2026

Good evening everyone! Let’s start out with a scheduling and weather update - with a hurricane predicted to run right over us this weekend, we are going to cut this session short so our crew can safely make it home before this storm hits.

OUR NEW SCHEDULE is fluid but for now the plan is to be open and operating all day tomorrow (Thursday). Tomorrow morning we will get word from our friends at the Fort Morgan State Historic Site following the 8:00am storm update. Their decision will determine exactly when we will close up shop for the session. If we are allowed, we will band all day tomorrow (until 3:00pm) and then tear down half the site. Saturday is cancelled. I will keep you updated as our situation and this storm develops.

Now to today’s recap! It was another phenomenal day topping yesterday’s numbers! 111 birds banded today of 25 species bringing our weekly total to 312 birds banded of 42 species. Until today we had 38 Swainson’s Thrushes for the week and today alone we banded 41 sending this species to the top of our “most banded” list.

Top birds of the day included: Bay-breasted Warbler, Dickcissel, and Broad-winged Hawk. 🎉🎊🙌🏼

The number of visitors coming out to see us and learn about these incredible birds that call Alabama home through different parts of the year has been amazing. All week we’ve been fielding questions ranging from diet and nesting to migration habits and physiology. If you haven’t made it out yet, tomorrow is your day! If you can, come and spend the day with us soaking up the nerd knowledge and enjoying the camaraderie of this birdy family.

Many thanks go out to our phenomenal crew and to all who have joined us so far. We look forward to a great end to a great session!

**All banding and transmitter deployments are being conducted under a federally authorized Bird Banding Permit issued by the U.S. Geological Survey's BBL.

10/07/2026

Seven of the 10 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds we tagged in Cape May last weekend are already headed south.

On October 3 and 4, we banded 10 hummingbirds at one of our regular fall banding sites, which also happens to be Mike Lanzone's backyard in West Cape May. Each one got a BlūMorpho transmitter glued to its back. The tags weigh 0.06 to 0.08 g.

Oct. 5: The first one, F37854, crossed Delaware Bay and was in Virginia by evening. Oct. 6, 7:06 to 7:48 AM: Six more left from Cape May Point, where Motus Terra stations heard them go. About 25 minutes later, they were across Delaware Bay. By 10 AM, F37854 was in eastern North Carolina, 503 km (313 mi) from Cape May. By late morning, the six were 200 to 250 km (125 to 155 mi) away in Virginia, across the Chesapeake. The bird released in the opening shot was in Hampton by 11:28.

As of Tuesday morning, three were still in the yard.

Every red dot is a phone, tablet or computer with Bluetooth and location services turned on that heard a tag. The blue diamonds are Motus stations.

Where will they go next? Last fall, a hummingbird tagged at the Cape May Point Arts and Science Center made it to El Salvador. Follow along to find out.

New Jersey HumTrack and the Lower Cape Stopover Project are a collaboration between , and .

10/07/2026

Back in 2024, Kyle got a call from David La Puma from CTT inquiring about some hummingbird banding equipment for a collaborator in Mexico. Little did we know, that one phone call would snowball into an international collaboration of researchers working together to understand hummingbird movement and migration - HumTrack.

Since we began HumTrack, we have gained enough information to thoroughly question most of the things we thought we knew😅

We are incredibly honored to be partnered with Cellular Tracking Technologies and Cape May Point Arts and Science Center (and the A-Team David La Puma, Mike Lanzone, Sean Burcher, and Eric Johnson) aiding us in this massive project. We have a few scientific papers submitted with more in the works right now. In the near future, we will bring you more mind blowing migration tracks like these.

**All banding and transmitter deployments are being conducted under a federally authorized Bird Banding Permit issued by the U.S. Geological Survey's BBL.

10/07/2026

What an incredible day! The birds really showed up and showed out today with 105 individuals of 29 species banded. This doubled our numbers for the week to 201 individuals of 37 species.

We had a phenomenal list of species today including Blue-winged Warbler, Golden-winged Warbler, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Wilson’s Warbler, Summer and Scarlet Tanagers, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Black-and-white Warbler, and Acadian Flycatcher.

It was a great pleasure to share all of these incredible species with our visitors today and we hope to see you all again tomorrow!

Important note: we are watching this potentially developing system in the gulf. Kyle will update you all as needed.

**All banding and transmitter deployments are being conducted under a federally authorized Bird Banding Permit issued by the U.S. Geological Survey's BBL.

10/06/2026

Day 3 of our Fall Fort Morgan Bird Banding finally gave us a reprieve from heavy rains and afforded us some fantastic birds as well!

With 46 birds banded today bringing us to a total of 96 birds banded of 25 species for the week so far. Top bird of the day was a Yellow-billed Cuckoo - a target species for PhD student Maddie Jackson and Dr Jonathan Perez from the University of South Alabama who are both ba**ers on our crew. We have been hoping for Yellow-billed Cuckoos for the past year in order to deploy radio transmitters in order to study local and migration movement of this cryptic species.

Another fun perk of being “at the end of the world” at Fort Morgan is the opportunity to share random naturalist hours with our visitors in the form of reptilian fauna that live here on the Peninsula. Non-bird friends so far have consisted of a juvenile Black racer, baby Eastern mud turtle, juvenile Rough green snake and an Eastern glass lizard. We were able to preform our good deed for the day by removing 3 ticks from the Eastern glass lizard.

Fingers crossed for another stellar day tomorrow!

**All banding and transmitter deployments are being conducted under a federally authorized Bird Banding Permit issued by the U.S. Geological Survey's BBL.

10/03/2026

Here’s your Day 1 recap for our Fall Fort Morgan Bird Banding!

The weather held off for the first few hours allowing us to get 35 birds in hand spanning 15 species. One of those 35 was a recaptured Brown Thrasher that we originally banded at the site back in fall of 2022!

We would like to say a huge thanks for everyone that came and braved the weather with us. For the rest of the week, the plan is that there is no plan 😅 We will continue to play it by ear and be open as the weather conditions allow. This also means that if you come out to visit, you may see our crew scatter in all directions to close up our nets as the next rain shower closes in. I will do my best to update Facebook as we go though, if I get busy, I’ll be focusing on the birds so I make no promises.

Bird of the day: Painted Bunting 🙌🏼

**All banding and transmitter deployments are being conducted under a federally authorized Bird Banding Permit issued by the U.S. Geological Survey's BBL.

10/03/2026

Hey folks! We are calling it quits for the day for our Fall Fort Morgan Bird Banding amidst significant amounts of rain. I’ll post again this evening with what we got today and the plan for the rest of the week!

-Kyle

Address

27097 Palmetto Drive
Orange Beach, AL
36561

Telephone

+12512696527

Website

https://www.bandingcoalition.org/, https://www.patreon.com/bandingcoalition

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