IMAGE GALLERY: Birders Band Together

Helen Blazis tenderly holds a fluttering catbird in her hand.

With the precision of a surgeon, she methodically removes one thread at a time, talking soothingly to the bird at times and cheerfully ignoring its pecks to her fingers.

She works patiently until the bird has become untangled from a net strung between two thickets of bushes.

This net serves as a classroom of sorts for Helen and Mark Blazis of Grafton.

The couple spends several weeks each spring and fall stringing nets at the Auburn Sportsmen’s Club to capture birds for banding.

Each bird is carefully removed from the nets, identified and weighed. The wings are measured and a sequentially numbered metal band is placed around the bird's leg. 

And then, as carefully as it was untangled, the bird is released back to freedom.

But in the meantime, each bird teaches the Blazises and their fellow bird banders a little more about the bird population, its health and its patterns.

Their banding work has added to the study of Lyme disease, for example. Each bird is checked for ticks.

Banding work also helps scientists better understand migration patterns. That is one reason the work is done in the fall and spring, when birds are migrating.

“How long they live, where they winter … so much of what we know about birds comes’’ from bird banders, Mark Blazis said.

He is one of only about 500 master banders in the United States.

Helen Blazis loves the immediacy of seeing a bird literally in the hand.

“It’s a close, intimate experience,’’ she said, as opposed to seeing a bird in a tree yards away.

Last Sunday morning, the birds captured and banded included robins, catbirds, black-and-white warblers, chickadees and phoebes.

“I love being able to share my passion with birds with all ages, from two to 102,’’ she said. “If you can see a tiny little bird from the Amazon, then by extension you have to appreciate its habitat.’’

These little birds provide a big service, she said. “It’s a magical keystone that can open the world of nature,’’ she said.