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Bird banding in America dates back to John James Audubon, who, in 1803, marked a brood of phoebes with silver wire. The following year, the
birds were recaptured near the area where they originally nested. Several banding schemes became popular; and in 1909, the American Bird Banding Association was formed as part of the Linnaean Society of New York.
In 1920, the Biological Survey
(then part of the Fish & Wildlife Service, now part of the U.S. Geological Survey, Biological Resources Division) took over the administration of bird banding. Since then, millions of birds have been banded.
The Eastern Bird Banding Association
was organized in 1923 for the purpose of bringing together those persons interested in banding birds. Originally the Association published a "Bulletin," but in 1929 this was discontinued and we joined forces with Northeastern and Inland associations to
publish a quarterly journal, Bird Banding.
The founders of the Eastern Bird Banding Association were Arthur Allen, Frank Burns, Maunsell S. Crosby, Beecher Bowdish, Howard Cleaves, John Gillespie, John Nichols, Witmer Stone, and Rudyerd Boulton.
Carlton M. Herman was the first editor of EBBA NEWS.
For more recent history, in 1976 the Eastern and Western Bird Banding associations agreed to merge their publications into a new publication entitled, NORTH AMERICAN BIRD BANDER. In 1982 the
Eastern and Western Bird Banding associations were joined by the Inland Bird Banding Association, thus the NORTH AMERICAN BIRD BANDER became truly North American in scope.
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