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