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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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View from Little Bald
Mountain
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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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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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