A light rain was just starting to taper off as we crashed through the brush. The spicy fragrance of crushed sweet fern tickled our noses pleasantly. Birds sang all around us. Pushing through the clumps of head-high, stump-spouting scrub oak and red maple, we stepped carefully over the sooty remains of trees. Coming up on a long, narrow open area, a tall metal pole appeared out of nowhere – like finding the lamppost in Narnia.
With a little squinting, we soon noticed some filmy, black netting strung from the pole, 30 feet through the open area, and hitched to a matching pole. A few raindrops sparkled on the web. Here, our small group of Wisconsin Master Naturalist students gathered around Jim Bryce, a retired biologist with the USDA Forest Service and National Park Service, and long-time bird bander.
Briefly, Jim explained how the mist net works. The fine black threads are nearly invisible, and they are strung to form long, floppy pockets. When an unsuspecting bird flies into the net, it drops into a pocket, and gets tangled in the net. Then a bander can carefully extricate the bird for processing.
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