Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of profiles of the Wisconsin Idea in action. See past profiles we have published.

How do you handle a tiny warbler? Cautiously but firmly. It’s 7:30 on a breezy Saturday morning in the mid-summer, and the 9-gram beauty is wriggling as Mara McDonald withdraws it from a paper lunch sack. The bird soon stills, as if sensing the gentle grip of a hands-on bird lover with a strong background in ornithology.

An American goldfinch is safely held as information about the bird is recorded. Mara McDonald, an administrative program specialist in the Department of Genetics and ornithologist, has spent the last eight years working on bird banding as part of her brainchild, the Biocore Prairie Bird Observatory. The project will reveal the histories and migration patterns of individual birds.

Photo: Jeff Miller

Her day job is helping administer the genetics department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but on Saturdays, McDonald lets her inner ornithologist fly in the Biocore Prairie, adjacent to the Eagle Heights Community Garden, overlooking Lake Mendota.

Surrounded by acres of native flowering plants, and with only the birds and the breeze for a sound track, it’s an idyllic place, but there is work to be done. By now, McDonald and her small squad of helpers, a mix of townies and gownies, have already strung up eight gauzy, black nets, and begun measuring and banding the birds as they get snagged.

McDonald press-gangs a greenhorn helper into stenographic service, grasps a caliper from the table, and measures the bill, tarsus and wingspan, among other structures, then affixes a tiny band on its leg for identification. The bird is a common yellowthroat — a familiar bird.

This deft measurement technique is also familiar to McDonald, who for the last eight years has overseen her brainchild, the Biocore Prairie Bird Observatory. During that time, she and her volunteers have banded 1,800 birds. As in many matters ornithological, amateurs play a big role in this long-term project. After all, much of the information on U.S. bird populations emerges from two nationwide, annual surveys that are dominated by unpaid bird lovers. But these surveys tell us nothing about the life histories or migratory patterns of individual birds, and that is where banding comes in.

Demanding only time, energy and a willingness to learn, McDonald has enlisted helpers from across the university and beyond in the banding project.

Jerry Simmons, for example, who has been taking part for six years, is a physician assistant. As Simmons examines a song sparrow, he fans its feathers out to assess its age and health, then delicately affixes a band to its leg, a keepsake the bird will wear for the rest of its life. Simmons needs no supervision as he handles the birds, calipers and books with efficiency and confidence. Between birds, Simmons tromps off to check the nets, something that is done at least every 15 minutes or so. As he walks between nets, he explains his motivation: “I enjoy a chance to check out the flowers in the prairie, as well as contribute to some science.”

McDonald, meanwhile, is struggling with what the bird books call a “confusing fall warbler,” and even in her experienced hands, the bird resists pigeonholing. Moving back and forth between a careful examination of the bird and an enormously detailed bird-identification book, McDonald and wildlife ecology student Yushi Oguchi decide they are holding a Tennessee warbler. Then another of the battered manuals strewn across the picnic table convinces them that it is an orange-crowned warbler. Eventually, McDonald decides she is holding another common yellowthroat.

Her arduous identification completed, McDonald releases the bird back to the wind with a slight upward flick of the hands. With luck, this bird will be retrieved some day, somewhere, and the finder will report the bird’s number, health and location by phone or the web to the federal bird banding lab in Maryland. And our picture of the natural world will gain one more iota of data.

McDonald was born overseas and lived in eight states and five countries. As a student at the University of California at Los Angeles, she became entranced by nature. “I took an ecology class, and we went to the Mojave Desert in a year after plentiful rains, and it was like a garden of flowers. Five species of hummingbirds were migrating through, darting, buzzing each other, doing their reproductive displays. I was in a garden, and these jewels were sparkling all over. I was hooked.”

Ornithology is about much more than just beauty, however. For her Ph.D. research at the University of Florida, McDonald studied two closely related birds in Haiti, hoping to understand how they had diverged from their common ancestor, and concluded that the regulation of genes, not just the structures they code for, played an important role. But when McDonald arrived in Madison in 1992, she could not find work in ornithology, and eventually settled in as an assistant administrator in genetics. In 2001, she initiated the bird observatory because she “wanted to get back into the field; I wasn’t getting enough hands-on stuff.” In 2005, she began working with the Evolution Initiative, a collaboration among the many students and scientists who study evolution across campus.

But on Saturdays, first things come first, and the first thing is birds. Birds have long played a fundamental role in larger scientific issues. Darwin’s examinations of finches in the Galapagos helped him formulate his theory of evolution through natural selection, and Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” focused on the harm that pesticides were doing to birds.

Birds, McDonald says, “are like the coal-mine canaries of the environment,” and in that spirit, McDonald wants to see how birds are responding to modern ecological changes. The banding station is located near an old, unrestored field and two prairie restorations. “One prairie has been going since 1997, and I was asking how restoration impacts the bird community.” Within five years, her research showed that more bird species were frequenting the prairie restoration than the old field. Data from the observatory will also be used to watch the long-term consequences of climate change, she adds. “There are already studies that demonstrate that some bird species are breeding farther north than they ever have, and we already have reports of southern species, mockingbirds, Carolina wrens and cattle egrets, in this area.”

Because a long-term project is always in need of new talent, McDonald has brought along her neighbor Caroline Zelinka, for a taste of the action. McDonald is careful to give newcomers a chance to hold birds, if briefly, and Zelinka, with an expression that asks, “Can I really do this?” gets to release a house wren after the banding ceremony.

The family of Michelle Louis and John Bauch, of Middleton, is among the most dedicated volunteers at the observatory. “Mara is a joy to work with because she is eager and energetic about sharing her vision and the responsibilities of it with those she works with,” says Louis. “Though her knowledge is extensive, she is unpretentious and unselfish about it. She teaches us with patience and a sense of humor. She makes it easy. That is her gift.”

The enthusiasm even extends to the couple’s two sons, Evan Bauch, 14, and particularly Alex Bauch, 16. “Alex is particularly keen on spending as much time learning from Mara as possible,” says Louis. “Alex is generally the most eager to jump out of bed early Saturday mornings in spite of his adolescence. This says loads about Mara’s contagious enthusiasm!”

Field biology has a long, honorable history, but other approaches to biology are more trendy these days, McDonald says. “Field trips are costly in time and money, and young people are not getting that exposure now,” and a mention of bird banding “often gets quizzical looks from young people,” even from students in Biocore, the university’s honors biology curriculum. “Some younger kids are interested, and come out, but on the whole, most people don’t consider it that important.”

Having a bird observatory on campus, she says, “is a tremendous opportunity for students and the public, to be able to get out in nature and understand what is out there. When you start working with plants, mammals, birds, your mind expands. Once you start noticing things, a species of bird that is not a cardinal or a sparrow, that has its own life history, behavior and needs, you start to become more sensitive to environmental issues.”