Good questions Kinderchicklets!
The colour of the chicks' bands depend on lots of things - but they are all things that make it easier for us to tell which bird is who. And they don't just get one band they get two, one for each of their legs.
First the coloured bands ...
Birds that are hatched in the wild, like ours, have black bands. Now some of the birds in the USA and in eastern Canada (Ontario and Quebec) have bands that are half black/half red or half black/half green. There are lots of chicks in these places and the easiest thing to see is the colour of a band when you are a long way away, so having bands with more than one colour helps the peregrine people there to start to figure out who is who. The numbers are pretty small, so often takes us weeks to be able to figure out who has come home to visit or nest.
A bird that is bred in captivity and released gets a special band - their bands are all red. It makes it very easy to see them. There aren't very many captive-bred birds, so finding one is very special. We have one in Winnipeg, his name is Beau and he lives with Jules in West Winnipeg.
Now these coloured bands have numbers and letters on them just like Ms French said and when we use our binoculars and cameras and spotting scopes, we can read the letters and numbers and that tells us who the birds - its like if everyone in your class had exactly the same running shoes - how would you be able to tell which shoes were yours? One way is that you could put your name or initials on the back of your shoes and that way, you could tell which one was yours even if they were all the way across the room mixed up with everyone else's shoes.
The other band ....
The band on the chicks' other leg is a silver band and it has a very long number, like your phone number. And it is unique, that means there is only one bird with a silver band with that number. For example, let's say that are two Michaels in your class, the name on their running shoes will be the same right? But if everyone put their name and their phone number on their shoes, the Michaels would be able to tell which was their shoes because while the name would be the same, their phone numbers would be the different! Problem with having a long number on a silver band is that we can't read them even with the webcameras, so we rely on the coloured bands to tell us who is who throughout a peregrine's life.
So what kind of bands do our birds have ...
Well our chicks have all black bands with white letters and numbers on them. That is because they are all wild chicks, they weren't born in captivity. They also have silver bands with the long number but since we can't see those numbers, we put coloured tape on the silver band to help us tell the chicks apart. When we use our binoculars and look at a chick - or even when we look on the webcams - we will be able to say - "that chick has a black band on one leg and yellow tape on the silver band on his other leg" - and then we can tell who the chick is even though we haven't read the numbers on his black band. The tape will only last for a few months before it comes off on its own (or with a little help from the chick) and then we will have to read the numbers on their black bands, just like we have to do for all the adult peregrines.
Now not all our adult peregrines have the same bands ...
Princess' coloured band is black and green - she came from a wild nest in the USA
Ivy's and Hurricane's and Brooklyn's are all black - they all hatched her in Manitoba
Beau's is red because he was born in captivity and released when he was old enough
and Jules has what is called a ring band, it is very very small and very thin and we can't tell who she is or where she came from unless we catch her and we don't think she would like that and because we don't want to upset her, we won't try to catch her if we don't have to.
