We take a lot of pride in our bird-banding program — especially when we get reports on birds sighted hundreds of miles from their release point.
A case in point is P63, a female hatch-year Brown Pelican. P63 was found stranded in June 2014 in Santa Cruz and treated at our San Francisco Bay Center for emaciation, hypothermia, anemia, and miscellaneous minor injuries.
Once P63 was well, she was blue-banded as part of our bird-banding program and released at Fort Baker in Sausalito on July 3, 2014. She was first sighted on March 7, 2015, in Morro Bay, and then again on October 22 while plunge diving in Netarts Bay, Oregon—about 700 miles from her initial release location. We extend our thanks to Dwight Porter of Portland, one of our citizen scientists, who reported his sighting of P63 on our online reporting site and gave us some great photos.
International Bird Rescue puts specific color markers on the bands placed on certain species of birds (as do many other organizations) to aid in the identification of the birds’ band ID numbers. If you spot a bird with a band and/or a color marker, please report your sighting here: http://www.bird-rescue.org/contact/found-a-bird/reporting-a-banded-bird.aspx