With just 32 birds to go to reach our milestone 400,000th bird banded over the course of the Powdermill program's 40 year history, we anxiously opened 24 mist nets beginning at 6:15am on April 24, 2001.  The weather forecast was for increasing wind by late morning, and the radar screen showed that we had only about two hours before showers were likely to move into our area, possibly forestalling our capture of the long-awaited 400,000th bird.  Luckily, by 8:00am we were within just three birds of our goal.

As we made the circuit of our nets, our first bird was a Solitary Sandpiper, next an Ovenbird, then, finally, in the bottom shelf of the last net set to be checked that round was...

The bird!

Ligonier Echo Photo

In keeping with the tradition of birds that have set our three previous 100K marks (Swainson'sThrush, Song Sparrow, and Ruby-crowned Kinglet), the milestone 400,000th bird was neither unusual nor brightly colored...

With nearly 5,000 of its kind banded here in 40 years, it was an appropriate and deserving winner, we all agreed.   In any case, with 30 banded in the last week, it was a clear odds on favorite!

Senior Bander, Bob Leberman, did the honors of removing the bird from the net and placed it in a special bag for transport back to our banding lab.
 
 

At the lab, a special size 0 band was selected, beautifully crafted of solid 14K gold (okay, made of aluminum and colored with a yellow Sharpie marker!).  The sparrow, judged to be a second-year bird of undetermined sex (but probably a female), had a wing length of 64.5 mm, no visible fat deposits, and weighed 10.9 grams.
 
 

Ligonier Echo photo

Ligonier Echo photo

All those in attendance, Powdermill banders Bob Leberman and Bob Mulvihill (and wife, Bonnie, and their children, Mead and Robert), long-time banding volunteers Bob Shaw and Carroll Labarthe, Powdermill Director, Joe Merritt, and editor of The Ligonier Echo, Rick Schwab, shared a bottle of sparkling grape juice, offered up a toast to the bird's good health and longevity (and that of the banding program), threw Chipping Sparrow #2200-48388 a little party and sent it on its merry way!
 

Just a short while later, the winds became gusty, it began to rain, and we closed all of our nets for the rest of the day.