University of Delaware
Office of Public Relations
The Messenger
Vol. 5, No. 2/1996
Banding birds

     During the first week of May each year, Roland Roth,
professor of entomology and applied ecology, goes to the woodlot
behind Delaware Stadium to catch and band the woodthrush, a neo-
tropical migratory bird. Once the birds are banded, Roth returns
every day to seek out nests and follow the "return rate," or the
productivity of the woodthrush and the number of young each bird
must tend. Over the past 25 years, Roth, whose research is funded
by the U.S. Forestry Service and the College of Agricultural
Sciences' Experimental Station at Townsend Hall, has banded 1,000
adult woodthrush and 1,300 young woodthrush. Roth is currently
writing an account of the woodthrush for a series of booklets
called Birds of North America.
                                   -Susanne Schott, Delaware '96