I almost didn't band this morning as the cold and windy weather didn't look too promising. After six hours I'd caught five birds; 3 Western Palm Warblers, 1 Song Sparrow and 1 American Robin.  The robin was a recapture that I banded on my first day at Fry's Landing, which got me thinking about how old the birds are that we've been recapturing. Although the goal of our study isn't to determine how long our birds live, it is one of the side benefits of conducting banding at a single location for a long period of time. 

Since the 18th of April, we've captured 79 birds, six of which were recaptures. Two of the recaptures were birds first banded this year, This leaves us with four birds banded in previous years; one Black-capped Chickadee, one Tufted Titmouse, one Song Sparrow and one Northern Cardinal. Not surprisingly, all of them are local breeders and have been captured multiple times over the years. 

The cardinal and chickadee were both at least three years old, the sparrow was at least four years old, and the titmouse was at least six years old. That's pretty impressive for a bird that weighs less than an ounce. 

However she has a long way to go to beat the record of 13 years, which is the current record for a banded bird. The Bird Banding Laboratory in Patuxent has a web page detailing longevity records. There you can check on tof the species that they have records for. 

http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbl/longevity/Longevity_main.cfm 

(For a real shock, guess how long a Mourning Dove can live and then check to see how close you were).