Come join us for our first songbird banding session of the year! Imagine holding a real wild bird in your hand! We have been using bird banding as a way to educate the public about bird conservation and to monitor the breeding bird population in Walker Valley for over fifteen years. Once a week throughout the summer, we open a series of mist nets across our campus to catch, identify, band and assess the birds that are using this area. Our banding station is the Council House, which is the open-roofed heptagonal fire pit shelter just a stone’s throw to the south of the main office parking lot. We will set up nets generally 30 minutes before sunrise, and will open them at sunrise. We then check them every 30-40 minutes for 6 hours. It always makes for an exhilarating morning full of surprises. In addition to the bird banding station, we will have booths representing each of our citizen science research projects. Hands-on activities at each booth will introduce you to the world of citizen science at Tremont Institute.