Hawk banding

I came back home and my wife told me that I had missed some hawk activity out back and that she had got some pictures of the action. I leave my camera on the tripod in the living room facing out to the open desert behind our place so she turned on the camera and started clicking away. What kind of hawk, what kind of action and how many pictures did you get were the first questions that I asked. The answers were, not sure about the hawk, a few pictures and it was gross as the hawk ate an entire bird. I quickly started looking at the images she had taken and saw that a sharp shinned hawk had taken down a mourning dove. One of the things I noticed after I took a more detailed look at the images was that the hawk was banded. That raised a question to me. How do you catch and band a hawk? I have read articles about setting up birding nets to capture and tag birds but do they do the same for hawks? Or could of this been a captured hawk that got away? I have seen banding on smaller birds before but never a hawk, so I am curious how this would be done for a hawk?
Thanks for any feedback.
Jim

It's my understanding most hawks are banded when they are chicks - which is certainly one of the safer ways to go about it

- Luke

As chicks - and it's not a particularly safe job :)
(Photo courtesy Xcel Energy)

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Actually, many more accipiters (Sharp-shinned and Cooper's primarily) are banded as passage birds in fall migration. There was (and probably still is) a very active hawk banding station in Cape May, NJ near the lighthouse.

The banders operate from a blind (hyde) where they can observe a lure that attracts passing hawks. When a hawk grabs the lure the banders spring a net and rush out to get the hawk.

The lure is a pigeon in a leather "vest" on a tether, The vest gives some protection to the pigeon so that the banders don't need to replace it after every capture.

If you attend the New Jersey Audubon Society Autumn Weekend you can usually attend a session where a couple of the banders bring out a few captured hawks ready to be released. The banders show field marks and explain differences between the species. Infrequently they'll have a Broad-winged Hawk or something even bigger to show.

I photographed this vanity plate at one of these demonstrations in Cape May in 1985. I think this plate belonged to Bill Clark, co-author with Brian Wheeler on a couple of excellent books on hawk ID.

Thanks Richard for the insight.

- Luke

I've spent a lot of time at the Idaho Bird Observatory banding migrating raptors. There are many other, similar banding stations, including one in AZ, I believe. There are several ways of going about it; for smaller raptors, these days they frequently use mice or pigeons in wire boxes, and the tops are covered with loops of monofilament. The raptor's talons become entangled and the bird is captured. There are also maze, cages, spring traps and cannon traps. If you ever get the chance, visit a raptor banding station... It's a hoot.

Thank you for the information and comments, very interesting.

How do you band a hawk?..........Very carefully!