Audubon’s famous banding experiment: Fact or fiction?

Abstract

John James Audubon has been hailed as the progenitor of bird banding in America, but the high rate of natal philopatry in banded Eastern Phoebes (Sayornis phoebe) that he reported is an outlier when compared to modern data. More troubling, a reconstruction of the timeline of events with multiple independent primary sources, shows that Audubon was not in Pennsylvania when he claimed to have re-sighted two banded phoebes there in 1805. These facts cast doubt on the veracity of his story.