Dear Friends,
|
The year ahead is filled with exciting possibilities. We’ll move back into our newly renovated headquarters at Magee Marsh Wildlife Area with a brand-new education center and windows on wildlife, and we can’t wait to welcome you to our beautiful new home! Another milestone worthy of celebrating is that 2026 marks the 20th anniversary of BSBO’s Ohio Young Birders Club. For 20 years, your support has enabled us to educate, encourage and empower our youth conservation leaders, and inspire more than a dozen other states to use our successful model to start their own youth birding programs. We’ll also host The Biggest Week In American Birding, bringing together thousands of people from around the world to northwest Ohio, unified by their common love of birds and birding. And we’ll continue to fight back against the greatest threats to birds, including window collisions and outdoor roaming cats.
|
|
But this year-end, I want to focus on two tiny travelers, and the scientific research that helps tell their astonishing stories.
A tale of two warblers…
This fall, on October 3, our banding research team recaptured a Blackpoll Warbler almost a year to the day that they originally banded and aged it as a hatching-year. If we average out where this bird hatched (Blackpolls breed throughout most of Canada and Alaska) and where it wintered (northern South America), since hatching in 2024, we estimate that this bird had already flown more than 11,000 miles! All in the first year and a half of this small bird’s life.
A tale of two warblers…
This fall, on October 3, our banding research team recaptured a Blackpoll Warbler almost a year to the day that they originally banded and aged it as a hatching-year. If we average out where this bird hatched (Blackpolls breed throughout most of Canada and Alaska) and where it wintered (northern South America), since hatching in 2024, we estimate that this bird had already flown more than 11,000 miles! All in the first year and a half of this small bird’s life.
Blackpoll Warbler banded October 2, 2024
Recaptured October 3, 2025
|
Astonishing enough that the story could end right there, right? But it doesn’t. In fact, it reminds us of another time and another extraordinary little bird with its own remarkable story to tell.
Most of the Blackpolls we band we’ll never see again in a subsequent year. Given their migratory routes, extensive breeding range well to the north of Ohio, and the minute size of our banding station compared to the vast continental landscape, the chances of recapturing a Blackpoll again during another migration are slim. But in fall of 2011, the BSBO research team captured a return Blackpoll Warbler. The band it was wearing matched a numeric sequence BSBO had used, but not for several years. When we looked back at our banding records, our jaws dropped. BSBO had banded this bird exactly FIVE YEARS earlier to the day! Imagine, your summer home is in the far north, maybe Alaska; your winter home is somewhere in the jungles of South America; and you rely on a special beach ridge in northwest Ohio for the critical stopover connection between the two. |
You visit all these places, not by airliner, but by your own wing power. During fall migration, you spend 80+ hours with nothing but open expanses of ocean beneath you, longing for that first glimpse of terra firma. And you do this each autumn, for at least six years, guided by the primordial instincts that have obviously served you well.
Then, exactly five years to the day of your first visit, you return to one of this continent’s most important stopover sites, to the astonishment of human friends from long ago. What stories you could tell. What stories you DID tell, since you were wearing our band. This Blackpoll Warbler, a true miracle of migration, first meeting the strange creatures that placed a “bracelet” on your leg on September 13th, 2006, calling you an adult male, and giving you an identity as number 2400-42807.
We estimate that this bird, weighing less than an ounce, had traveled at least 50,000 miles in its lifetime, a significant portion of those miles over the open ocean.
50,000 miles on nothing more than feathers and faith.
Migratory birds make these perilous journeys every spring and fall. Guided by instinct, they take the leap into the unknown with the faith that the habitat they need will be there at the end of their flight.
This is where YOU come in.
Your year-end donation will allow BSBO to continue to make these important discoveries and share them with the world, inspiring people of all ages to care more about birds and bird conservation, generating the support necessary to protect and conserve the precious habitat that these winged miracles rely upon for their survival.
Then, exactly five years to the day of your first visit, you return to one of this continent’s most important stopover sites, to the astonishment of human friends from long ago. What stories you could tell. What stories you DID tell, since you were wearing our band. This Blackpoll Warbler, a true miracle of migration, first meeting the strange creatures that placed a “bracelet” on your leg on September 13th, 2006, calling you an adult male, and giving you an identity as number 2400-42807.
We estimate that this bird, weighing less than an ounce, had traveled at least 50,000 miles in its lifetime, a significant portion of those miles over the open ocean.
50,000 miles on nothing more than feathers and faith.
Migratory birds make these perilous journeys every spring and fall. Guided by instinct, they take the leap into the unknown with the faith that the habitat they need will be there at the end of their flight.
This is where YOU come in.
Your year-end donation will allow BSBO to continue to make these important discoveries and share them with the world, inspiring people of all ages to care more about birds and bird conservation, generating the support necessary to protect and conserve the precious habitat that these winged miracles rely upon for their survival.
Thanks to the generous challenge match from a team of donors,
your donation will be DOUBLED up to a total of $65,000!
AND, donate $25 or more for your chance to win a $4,000 optics prize package!
your donation will be DOUBLED up to a total of $65,000!
AND, donate $25 or more for your chance to win a $4,000 optics prize package!
Your year-end donation is more than a transaction; it is a renewal of your commitment to research, education, and conservation, a testament to your passion for birds, and a declaration of your belief in the power of collective action to create positive change in the world.
|
Thank you for your generosity, for sharing the vision, and for helping BSBO to be a force for good in the world. We wish you peace and joy in the coming year, and always.
Sincerely, 
Kimberly Kaufman
Executive Director |
|