The color bands are somewhat random. Midwest Peregrine orders for everyone in the Midwest. If my assumptions are correct, each color run - black/blue, black/red, black/green - consists of 4800 bands. That's assuming that we use one-character (A-Z) two-number (00-99) combinations where either numbers or letters could be on the top, with two unused letters. For example, Y/99 and 99/Y are both band numbers in a color run. There are currently 2,927 black/blue bands recorded in the database and that is not all of the bands, so whatever the number is (and I reached out to Dr. Redig to ask), it is high.
Every year, we inventory our bands and I order whatever I think we need from Midwest Peregrine. Every other peregrine bander in our region does the same, right? So if I need 75 bands, I get a contiguous string - maybe A/00 through A/75, for example. John C. from Indiana might need 45, so he might get A/76 through B/21. Jackie from Midwest Peregrine needs 75, so she gets B/22 through B/79. And so on. This means we'll have A/N birds and B/N birds in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana, although all 'A' birds in Minnesota will be RRP birds and all 'B' birds in Minnesota will be Jackie's birds. But this isn't planned, it's just a consequence of how bands are distributed.
The business we order from doesn't do coordinating - it just prints the bands that banders ask for. Coordinating our order through Midwest Peregrine helps make sure that we don't ask for the same sequence in the same color at the same time. If we ordered separately, RRP and MWP might both order A/00-A/99 in black over red, which means we would have two peregrines from the same region sporting the same bands at the same time. Is it our A/75 or Jackie's A/75? We wouldn't have a way to tell them apart.
Since we don't know exactly how many bands we need every year, and since some banders band a lot more falcons than other banders, we don't spilt 4800 bands into large lots for each group. From a management perspective, it makes more sense to dole them out per year, in string order. But from an outside perspective, it can seem really confusing that peregrines in Indiana and WI might both have U/number bands.
I hope this helps!
Amy
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Topic: 2025 Great Spirit Bluff Falcons (Read 7787 times)