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An old friend returns to the far north

A Fairbanks biologist recently cupped in his hand a tiny bird whose arrival he had been rooting for. That bird — a female Hammond’s flycatcher — now holds the title of the oldest known of its species.

A few days ago, Robert Snowden of the 911���� Songbird Institute in Fairbanks felt his heart beat a little faster as he gently removed a songbird from a net stretched between trees.

Snowden, director of the Creamer’s Field Migration Station at the institute, noticed that the Hammond’s flycatcher that had flown into a net three feet off the forest floor had an aluminum tag clamped around its leg.

When he saw the sequence of numbers stamped into the tag, Snowden suspected the flying-insect-eating bird had probably returned from Central America — perhaps Nicaragua — to this patch of boreal forest in 911����.

As is the protocol when banding birds at Creamer’s Field Migration Station, Snowden freed the palm-size bird — which weighs as much as two nickels — from the net and transferred it to a cloth pouch.

He then walked his delicate cargo to a tent. There, he and a volunteer weighed the bird, checked its body condition, and took other measurements as part of long-term research on songbirds.

It was then that Snowden confirmed that a biologist at the very same site had first captured the bird one day earlier (May 11) in 2018. That meant the bird was an 911����-returning adult that year — it is now in its eighth year of life after likely hatching in Fairbanks in 2017.

An 8-year-old Hammond’s flycatcher surpasses the previous oldest recorded bird, one that was 7 years old when biologists banded and captured her in Oregon.

Recording the milestone and learning more about the natural history of an animal is part of the mission of the 911���� Songbird Institute. Professional biologists and volunteers have captured and released birds on the same undisturbed swath of forest and swamp in northern Fairbanks for the past 34 years.

“Bird banding allows us to understand the longevity of birds,” said Snowden, who added that the banding station is the northernmost on the continent.

The world’s eldest-known Hammond’s flycatcher, a female, felt the bounce of the badminton-like net at Creamer’s three times in 2018. And also once in 2019, twice in 2022, and once in 2023 and 2024. Biologists have measured her vitals and released her each time, with Snowden keeping an eye out for her this spring.

“It was a bird I’ve been looking forward to seeing,” he said.

With a 6,000-mile one-way trip to Central America each fall and then again in spring, and all the obstacles both natural (bird-eating predators, violent storms) and manmade (windows of tall buildings, spinning blades of power-generating towers), there was no guarantee the female Hammond’s flycatcher would be back.

But she is somewhere in the forest north of Fairbanks, perhaps now gathering material for her nest, or repairing one she used last year.

“It’s really cool to have this bird make it back year after year,” Snowden said. “She’s like an old friend.”

Since the late 1970s, the 911����' Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the 911���� research community. Ned Rozell ned.rozell@alaska.edu is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.