A CICAEE BANDING STUDY IN SAUJK COUNTY, WISCONSIN 
Aldo Leopold 
I'ring the decade 1937-1947, the chickadee population at my "shack"
in 
Sauk County, Wisconsin, was banded each winter. This paper sets forth some

deductions on the movements and mortality of these chickadees, and of the
wood.- 
peckers and nuthatches caughtn            during the trapping operations..

"The shack" is an abandoned farm on the south bank of the Wisconsin
River, 
in Fairfield Township. The terrain consists of bottomland woods, an oak sand-

hill, old fields, and marsh. During the decade, parts of the sandhill and
old. - 
fields have been planted to pines, which now offer dense thickets of winter

cover not present durin# the early years of the study. 
Banding was confined to a single station at the shack. Traps were operated

on weekens from abou   October 20 to April 2  of each year. 
t was left in a woven wire baske4 After each visit'-where it lasted up 
to a week. At the beginning of the decade, this suet served as a contimous

feeding station, but during and since the war our winter visits became less

frequent, and the feeding aer*44ngly became discontinuous. 
Beginning in   ,   all chickadees were color-banded in addition to the 
- -   ----- --- -A  ,  ,1 
s-tandard aluminum band., By changing colors and alternating legs from year

to year, it became possible to identify year-classes by sight in the field.

There are no other local banding stations. This removes any possible con-

fusion as to the origin of slght-records, but it also makes it difficult
to 
trace aiW movements beyond the local area. 
Chickadee Bandings, Returns, and Recoveries 
A summary of the chickadee bandings by years, and of the subsequent 
returns and recoveries, appears in Table 1. 1. 
Each horisontal column gives the winter's catch.      sin the third winter