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The birds and the ... chiggers?

Bryce Donovan
The Post and Courier

Jeff Mollenhauer, director of bird conservation for Audubon South Carolina, caught almost as many birds as Bryce did parasites.

This column was supposed to be about birds.

About how the nice folks at Francis Beidler National Forest in Harleyville are catching them, studying them, marking them and then releasing them back into the wild in the hopes of learning how to better protect them in the future.

But somewhere along the line I got bitten by 8 million chiggers. Now if you've never had a chigger bite, the best way I can describe it is: I hate you.

I'm sorry. It's just that with the amount I'm ... itching lately, I'll be lucky if I ... sleep eight hours in the next two weeks. That's because every five minutes or so your legs itch so badly you ... wish your name was Edward Scissorhands. Your waistline burns like a forest fire. And that little spot on your back you can't quite reach? Yeah, it taunts you as you look for the remote, a book, the dog ... anything you can scratch with.

It's only during those short spans between the violent scratching that you can focus on whatever it was you were talking about. Which, in my particular case was birds.

Like I was saying earlier, Jeff Mollenhauer, who is the director of bird conservation for Audubon South Carolina, is trying to catch lots of the winged creatures so that he can perform what is known as "bird banding." Much like the name implies, bird banding is the act of finding the perfect group of birds and then pairing them together to create the ultimate boy band. Wait, is that right? OK, I just checked my notes and as it turns out I was way off: I don't take notes. But if my memory serves me correctly, bird banding is the process of catching birds and putting a tiny little ID bracelet on their legs. According to Mollenhauer, this aviary bling contains a unique nine-digit number on it that the bird is able to call in case he has car trouble. An added benefit is that scientists like Mollenhauer can identify the birds if they ever catch them again.

So why does he do this? My best guess is because he's single.

Of course I'm only joking. He's actually married. Mollenhauer just happens to love birds. And by catching them and banding them, he hopes to learn more about their diets and migratory patterns, thus educating others so as to better protect their habitats for generations to come.

How he catches them is simple: He sets up a sliding glass door in the middle of the forest. By which, of course, I mean, he goes around the 16,000 acres of forest, usually with his righthand man Mark Musselman, and sets up 9-foot-tall nets that stretch some 30 feet across. What sort of idiotic bird would fly into a net? Well, they're so hard to see that if you were to go running through the swamp, you wouldn't know you were going to hit a net until you were one step away from it.

Now in case you were also wondering: Yes, I got tangled up several times. And no, not just anybody can set up nets and catch birds. To be permitted to do it, you have to work for a national park and have at least three UPC symbols off the bottom of Count Chocula cereal.

The prize ornithological catch in the Francis Beidler Forest is what is known as a prothonotary warbler or what most people refer to as that yellow bird on the postcard in the gift shop. This particular bird is about the size of a tennis ball and roughly the same color. It's pretty safe to say that this little guy is on most bird lovers' "must see" list.

Though we never caught one during my entire time there on Friday, luckily we were able to catch the elusive chigger.

As for how you can avoid falling victim to the same fate as I did, well, I'm not sure yet.

But just as soon as Mollenhauer is done banding them and releasing them all back into my pants, I'll let you know what he says.

Bryce Donovan looks like he has the chicken pox. Reach him at 937-5938 or bdonovan@postandcourier.com.