It's 7 a.m. and 16 birds are in the bags.

The bags are stretched along a cord, pinned like hankies on a clothesline. The birds flutter inside, trying to escape.

Ty Smucker grabs one, opens it, reaches in.

He's been doing this for a decade, now - handling birds, wolves, lynx, wildlife. He started out thinking he'd be a veterinarian, then realized he could help conserve entire species rather than just individual critters.

The bags are like unwrapped Christmas presents. Is this one a song sparrow? A Swainson's thrush? Maybe something colorful and exotic - a yellow warbler … western tanager … cedar waxwing?

Once, a few years ago, it was a rose-breasted grosbeak - one of the few times that eastern finch has ever been seen in Montana.

This time, it's a red-naped sapsucker - a common, blackbird-size woodpecker with a red, white and black head, red throat and sharp black bill.

It screeches at Ty and immediately starts hammering at his hand.

"We usually get scars from sapsuckers," he says cheerfully. "They dig in and start chewing."

He maneuvers the squirming bird onto its back and grabs it lightly from behind, cradling its neck between his fingers. It continues to squawk and bite. Another sapsucker, possibly its mate, answers from a nearby aspen.

Ty blows on its belly, parting the feathers to check its sex, breeding condition and to look for molting feathers. He clamps a metal band loosely around its leg, then stuffs it into a plastic container on an electronic scale.

Three children watch him work. They came up the night before with their mother, driving almost 200 miles specifically for this.

Ty pauses to tell them something about the bird.

"Sapsuckers have long tongues that wrap around the back of their heads, up over the skull and attach right here," he says, pointing to the middle of his forehead. "They drill holes in trees to get the sap running. The sap attracts bugs; then they'll come back to eat the bugs [and drink the sap]. That's why they're called sapsuckers."

The opportunity to do exactly this - teach children and adults something about wildlife while doing scientific research - prompted Ty and his wife, Kristina, to form their own nonprofit organization in 2001.

WREN, the Wildlife Research and Education Network, actively promotes public involvement in wildlife research.

"Some organizations are essentially glorified tour guides, just showing you animals," Ty says. "Others are so busy doing research, there's never a chance to interact with the public. We wanted to bridge that gap."

They took their first step towards that goal four years ago, when WREN

started a bird-banding station on the north end of Seeley Lake.

Since it opened in 2001, roughly 500 people have visited, including individuals, families, Boy Scout troops, Audubon groups and passing canoeists. They can observe the banding operations, ask questions, help record data or volunteer in other ways.

It's rare that someone leaves the station without at least having held a bird in his or her hands and letting it fly away.

Almost 2,000 birds have been banded to date, including several species of warblers, sparrows, flycatchers, woodpeckers, vireos, thrushes, chickadees.

"We've had some 80- to 100-bird days, but we average about 60 birds per day," Kristina says. "Over a season, we'll band 35 to 50 different species."

The station, which requires multiple federal and state permits, uses 10 mist nets in different locations. Each net is about the size of a volleyball net and made of almost invisible black line.

Small songbirds fly into the net and get caught in strategically placed pouches. Larger birds tend to bounce off and fly away.

Research at the station is done following protocols established for the Institute for Bird Populations' MAPS program.

The program collects data from more than 500 banding stations across North America. Its purpose is to monitor avian productivity and survivorship - the number of birds breeding and raising chicks each year and the number of birds that survive from one year to the next.

"Banding is one of the best ways to gather this kind of data," Kristina Smucker says. "The only other way to get productivity numbers is by doing labor-intensive nest search studies, and comparing the number of birds recaptured from one year to the next is really the only way to get survivorship data. Our partnership with MAPS is an easy way to make sure our data serves a larger purpose."

Following the MAPS protocols, the Seeley Lake station operates for seven days between June and August. The public is welcome to attend any or all sessions.

The mist nets are unfurled for six hours each morning, usually from about 6 a.m. to noon. They're checked every half-hour. For each bird that's captured, multiple characteristics are recorded, including sex, weight, age, species, band number, wing length and body fat content.

"It isn't unusual for birds to have zero body fat during the breeding season," Kristina says. "Their focus is on feeding their kids."

Later that day, three baby American redstart warblers are captured in the same net, together with a gorgeous black-and-red adult male and olive-yellow adult female.

"These may not be their parents, but it seems logical," Kristina says. "The average clutch is usually four. Maybe they had one smart baby. They probably all just left the nest."

The chicks weigh more than nine grams each, compared to eight grams for the adult male and 7.3 grams for the female.

After their chicks fledge, most birds will molt, replacing their feathers in preparation for the autumn migration.

"Some of the birds we see here, like chickadees and woodpeckers, don't migrate at all or just go a little ways," Kristina says. "Others, like robins and song birds, will move short distances. Then there's a whole category of neotropical songbirds - warblers, vireos, flycatchers - that migrate anywhere from northern Mexico to Guatemala and Costa Rica. Redstarts could go as far as the Amazon."

In late August and early September, she says, songbirds will start foraging like crazy, trying to put on fat. Warblers double their weight, causing their bellies and rumps to bulge with globs of fat.

"Most neotropical birds migrate at night to avoid raptors," Ty says. "By morning, they've burned off all their fat stores. They'll stop and rest, then forage in the afternoon. The next night, they start flying again."

The Smuckers may need to migrate themselves sometime soon. After years of uncertainty, moving from one temporary research project to the next as the seasons progress, they're looking for more permanent positions.

"We've run the station on essentially zero dollars," Kristina says. "We've been amazed and grateful for the support we've gotten from the Forest Service and Plum Creek Timber Company."

They've also received a lot of help from volunteers, including college students.

"We try to do education on two levels - one for the general public and one for students who need some field skills," Kristina says. "We love getting young biologists excited about doing research, and if we can put a warbler in a child's hands and let them watch it fly away, I've got to think that leaves a lasting impression.

"We really try to instill a little of that wonder. We want people to come away with a sense of fascination about nature."

Reporter Bill Spence may be reached at 758-4459 or by e-mail at bspence@dailyinterlake.com