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> This jay’s name, recorded in the data as WLKOSR, is an acronym for the color combination of the three bands on his legs. I'm getting a good vibe from these o

• greenyoda 3y ago
  "WLKOSR" seems to mean White [on the] Left, blacK Over Silver [on the] Right (3 bands). The other named bird that was mentioned was "Yosel Wober (YOSLWOBR)": Yellow Over Silver Left, White Over Blue Right (4 bands). (Or maybe "O" stands for "Orange", but that would mean YOSLWOBR has six bands; however all of the pictured birds had 3 or 4 bands. Also, in these two instances, "O" is always between two other colors, which is why I guessed it means "Over".) The "silver" band is apparently a metal band with an ID number that's placed on all birds, and the others are colored plastic bands that generate a locally unique identifier that can be read from a distance. The first page of the following reference gives some insight into the band encoding used by a particular research group (similar, but all their birds have exactly four bands), and the second page has examples of unique tags assigned to a collection of birds: https://www.uwyo.edu/biodiversity/_files/documents/misc/birdscouts_colorguide.pdf https://www.uwyo.edu/biodiversity/_files/documents/misc/bird...