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What's That Silver Bracelet?Celebrating three decades of Pulse of the Planet, here's a program from our archives.Have you ever seen a wild bird wearing a silver bracelet on its leg? Much of what we know about birds' habits and migration patterns comes from information gathered from bird banders, who catch and band more than a million birds a year. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.Lapham: The first thing I do is to look at the bird, and decide what size band it should get. It's like a little silver bracelet."Elise Lapham is a bird bander, licensed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. During the spring and fall bird migrations she sets up nets in the bushes near her home on Block Island, fourteen miles off the New England coast. Lapham: I've been banding for about 21 years now, and I have banded over 60,000 birds. What we do when we band, is we measure the wings, we look at the fat content, we age them in different ways, sometimes by plumage, sometimes by the color of their eye, sometimes by looking at their skulls, then we weigh them and return them into the wild. We don't keep them very long, just enough to process them and let them go again.When banded birds are recaptured, the information can be used to find out more about what birds eat, how long they live, and where they migrate. Lapham:If anyone ever finds a bird, sometimes in road kills, or it's brought to you dead, and it has a little band on it, take the number off, and write it on a postcard, and send it to Bird Banding, Washington, DC. That's all you have to do, and it will be delivered to the banding office, and they will let you know who banded it and where, and you can tell for yourself how far it has come.This archival program is part of our thirtieth anniversary celebration. If you want hear more, check out our podcast.