Nestled in between the two, just off Waterfowl Lane is the regional office for the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS). That’s where CHMA found Al Hanson and his crew one day last week, cleaning and prepping their airboat to head out on another round of bird banding in the marshy wetlands of the region.
Hundreds of thousands of birds have been banded and tracked in the international database to which Hanson and his crew contribute, and the collected information is used to help set parameters around the hunting season. The crew also collects data on avian flu, giving a sample of unlucky birds a COVID-like swab to test for traces of the disease.
The bird banding program based in Sackville can visit 12 to 15 different wetlands in about an hour’s radius, says Hanson. Every year the airboat crew will tag hundreds of birds from Dorchester to Wallace, Nova Scotia to PEI.
