"I feel like I should have my Daniel Boone hat on," says Kristin Tangen cheerily. It's May Day, and she's tramping through the woods over budding raspberry vines and through moss and mud at Ritter Farm Park in Lakeville. Snowflakes drift in the air.

She's among a group of five heading out to check the mist nets -- thin, almost invisible nets with long billowing pockets. Amber Burnette of Minneapolis totes along some "bird bags" Tangen sewed for her last night out of fabric with Steelers logos.

It's the first in a series of three public bird-banding events this spring at the park in which participants are helping catch, study and place bands on birds. The bands make it possible for the birds to be identified the next time they're caught.

Their first net check turns up nothing, but there are plenty of early migrants. Burnette, who works at the University of Minnesota Raptor Center, leans back and points. "It's a rose-breasted. Sweet." She yells at the grosbeak, "You get in here!"

"They're murderous villains," says Kristin's husband, Nick.

"They'll take apart your cuticles," says Kristin.

And there's an eastern towhee. "It's barking like a terrier," says Burnette. "It's the size of a terrier," Nick says.

The first catch of the spring is a palm warbler, a tiny songbird with yellow highlights and a chestnut-colored, toupee-like "crown patch." After untangling the bird from the net, Mark Newstrom, master bird bander and systems analyst for Three Rivers Park District, studies the warbler while Roger Everhart, an instructor at the School of Environmental Studies in Apple Valley, jots down the weight, wing and tail length, age, wear of the feathers, and other details. They submit the information to the U.S. Geological Survey bird-banding laboratory.

Newstrom, who has been banding for 33 years, says, "I got dragged to the first program kicking and screaming by my mother. I've thanked her ever since. It's worth every minute. That's for sure."

Everhart says banding has helped ornithologists study migratory patterns, life span and the natural history of a species (how it changes over a lifetime), and he says that today conservationists rely on banding to determine what birds use certain areas as migratory stops.

As the morning goes on, the mist nets catch chickadees, a yellow-rumped warbler, a myrtle warbler. Newstrom blows on the belly of a distressed mother woodpecker to reveal a bare spot -- a brood patch -- that she uses to incubate her young. Everhart points out the fat reserves on the belly of one bird. After resting up and feeding for a few days at stops like Ritter Farm, the birds will take off, often at night, navigating by the stars to their next location.

While they are recording data and attaching bands, Nick Tangen says, "I remember that I was going to be a rock star, but then I took an ornithology class and became a supernerd."

"Rock star of a different kind," says Everhart, who taught Nick's ornithology class.

Everhart, a true diehard, was even out bird banding on his wedding morning 20 years ago.

Nick got Kristin into the hobby, and she now photographs birds and posts photos online.

"Now I'm kind of addicted," she says. "It is always kind of a thrill when you see something and you say, 'I know what that is.'"

On warmer days, when there are more visitors, the bird banders let kids hold the birds, feel their heartbeats, then let them go.

Kristin herself "calls" a chance to release a tiny ruby-crowned kinglet, which weighs in at just six grams.

"That's six paperclips," she says. "It's nothing. It's just nothing."

Liz Rolfsmeier is a Minneapolis freelance writer.