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Big
Bald Banding Station (BBBS) is a volunteer
bird migration monitoring and research program
operating in the southern Appalachian
mountains of NC and TN during the months of
September and October. We welcome visitors at
all times but limit visitor participation in
day to day activities based on experience,
level of interest and needs of the program.
Bird safety and welfare is our primary concern
while collecting breeding and migration data
at Big Bald. BBBS is permitted under the USGS
Bird Banding Lab and the Cherokee National
Forest.
Formal data on birds migrating and using the
Big Bald habitat as a migration stopover have
been collected on generally the same site
since 1978. The banding station was
privately established by Dr. George Mayfield
and Cleo Mayfield of Columbia, TN. Their
passion and enthusiasm for banding birds have
produced a 30-year data set that can be a
valuable tool in identifying trends in bird
population health, age structure and migration
patterns.
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Sunrise at Big Bald Banding
Station
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Big Bald Banding Station is
located high on Little Bald Mountain
at 5390 feet above sea level
(1643m), inside the Appalachian
Trail corridor in Cherokee National
Forest, Unicoi County,
Tennessee. The habitat is an
edge transition mix of grassy bald,
invasive annual and perennial
shrubs, stunted northern hardwoods,
a few scattered immature spruce-fir
trees and native heath shrub
thickets. Wide vistas open to the
north towards Erwin, TN and
northeast toward Roan Mountain. Mt.
Mitchell and the Black mountain
range, with the highest peaks in the
eastern U.S., loom ten miles to the
southeast.
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BBBS
is one of very few banding stations in
the US that monitors and bands
songbirds, raptors and owls. An
average of ~2000 passerines are
captured, banded and safely released
each autumn migration at Big Bald. A
raptor trapping substation lures and
bands approximately 100 birds of prey
of 10 different species. And the Big
Bald Hawkwatch documents the passage
of 15 different species of raptors
annually. The Big Bald Hawkwatch has
counted a total of 12,644 birds of
prey, averaging 2100 migrating raptors
each autumn from 2003-2009.
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from
Little Bald
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Big Bald Mountain
has been designated as an Important
Bird Area (IBA) by the Tennessee Wildlife
Resources Agency (TWRA) and the
National Audubon Society's Important
Bird Area program.
Big Bald is part of the
Southern Blue Ridge IBA, which
includes several high altitude sites
such as Roan Mountain,
Unaka Mountain
and the Great Smoky Mountains National
Park. This
north-south corridor provides
migratory, breeding, and wintering
habitat for numerous bird
species.
Click here for details
of TN IBA programs
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