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Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

Bird Banding

yellow and grey bird with blue eyes

Did you know that over the last 55 years, Carnegie Museum of Natural History staff have banded nearly three quarters of a million birds at Powdermill Nature Reserve, the museum’s environmental research center in Rector, Pennsylvania?

Powdermill’s banding program began in 1961 and is the longest continually running banding program in the United States. Data from the program has been used to show that birds are adapting to climate change by breeding a month earlier than they did in 1961.

Powdermill Nature Reserve’s avian research center is part of Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s biological research station in Rector, Pennsylvania.  The research center operates a bird banding station, conducts bioacoustical research, and performs flight tunnel analysis with the goal of reducing window collisions.