what do the color bands mean?

agirlnamedrita · Post by **agirlnamedrita** » Sat Apr 12, 2008 1:51 pm

I have 3 gouldians with bands...all have the metal band...one has a green color band and one has a red color band...the other only has the metal band

Post by **Sally** » Sat Apr 12, 2008 2:24 pm

The metal bands could be NFSS bands, which will have the year of hatching on them. Split, or open, plastic bands are usually used by breeders so they can tell which family the bird belongs to. Say I have 3 pairs of Star finches, each pair has a different color assigned to it. I put the color band on the left leg of each parent. Then, after the babies fledge, I put the same color band on the right leg of each baby. Then, when babies are weaned and put into a flight cage to grow up, I can tell at a glance which babies are from which parents, so if I want to make up unrelated pairs, I can do so. The reason I mark parents on left leg and babies on right is that on many species, the babies soon look exactly like the parents, so it can be difficult to tell parent from child.

Kiko · Post by **Kiko** » Sun Apr 13, 2008 6:48 am

Hey thats very helpful info Sally, Rita I am glad you asked!

williep · Post by **williep** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 1:58 am

Sally, you seem to have a well organized banding structure, how do you tell in which year a baby was born or don't you split them in that way?

Post by **Sally** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 1:41 am

I haven't had to think about how to mark them as to when they were born, as I didn't have that many finches before, and I didn't keep the babies, so just had parents. Now I have more birds, and my Star babies from last year are now having babies, so maybe I need to think up a way to mark the year on them. I've thought of ordering the split plastic bands that have numbers on them, so then I could keep a written record on each bird. Maybe I will adopt a system of one color for all babies of one year. However, then you have to figure out which leg to put it on, plus use a color that isn't being used to mark families...this gets confusing!

And then you have the birds like Goldbreasts and Fire finches...their legs are so tiny, that they can easily lose the split bands. I have never closed banded before, but I ordered some closed bands from the NFSS. Most of my birds won't tolerate nest checks, but I understand that you can closed band the babies on the day they fledge, using the next size up.

I'd still like to come up with a way to tell at a glance both the family and the year of birth, without having to catch the bird to tell. Of course, the NFSS bands are color-coded for year, so that would be one way to go.

williep · Post by **williep** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 2:10 am

I assigned alphabetical letters to the different colors of band for example green is A, Blue was B ect.

I then started with one band only but ended up having to have bands on both legs as the birds increased. I numbered them as A=2007 (year on right leg) and then A (being bird 1 from year A) but this was very confusing as I had to have a reference book to tell which bird was from which parent.

That is why I've decided to restart the whole process and simplify it where possible.