The Original Tweets

Photo credit: Matthew Bernius

"There's no better way to see the sunrise than with the birds" says Multidisciplinary Studies student Carol Williams. Williams and a number of students, faculty, and community volunteers at the RIT Bird Observatory were up before 5:30AM this morning to open up nets and band the birds they catch. The data they collect at the station helps ornithologists and biologists better understand the size of local bird populations and research migration patterns.

The observatory founded in 2003, operates under the supervision of faculty sponsors Dr. John Waud, Environmental Science Professor, and Dr. David Mathiason, retiring Director of the Honors Program. The songbirds are banded at RITBO and are caught in "mist nets"—thin, light nets strung up between tress—put up by the banders. They regularly check the nets and extract caught birds, and process them: recording the birds species, weight, sex, and age. As of 8:30 this morning over 20 birds had already been caught and processed, including American Robins, American Goldfinches, and Myrtle and Yellow Warblers.

Visitors to ImagineRIT will be able to watch all the action on a special webcam set-up RIT Bird Observatory's table in the WOW center. You can also visit the Observatory online at http://www.rit.edu/cos/ritbo