We could not run the bird banding program at Coyote Creek Field Station without our volunteers.

More than 60 volunteers participate in this three-days-a-week, 52-weeks-a-year data collection program, contributing their time, expertise, and nimble fingers to increasing our understanding of local bird populations.

Their work directly feeds important research, such as the paper published last May showing that wildfire smoke changed bird health and behavior at CCFS.

​One of my favorite things about the volunteer program is that it includes people from many different backgrounds: students and retirees, scientists and artists, people who birded as children and people who discovered birds at age 65.

Some volunteers come to CCFS to start their careers in wildlife, others come to spend time in the woods. New volunteers are trained by experienced volunteers (and by SFBBO staff), and we all learn from each other. 

(photo left: Maya, an undergraduate student, works with an Anna’s Hummingbird.
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​One of our volunteers, S.B., is both new and experienced: she started volunteering last year, but 30 years earlier had participated in the earliest days of the banding program as a graduate student.

​Last week at the field station we found datasheets, yellowed with age, in which she recognized her own handwriting. The birds she handles now may be the great-great-great-great-[24 more greats]-grandchildren of birds she banded back then! 

(photo left: S.B. looks at her own handwriting from 1986).

The bird banding volunteer program is currently full, but you can join the waitlist or check out one of SFBBO’s other volunteer programs.