The Meadowlands Commission bands birds in the Meadowlands as part of our continuing research projects — but the program is also a terrific learning tool.

Earlier this month, Ms. Pitaccio's fourth-grade class from Jefferson School in Lyndhurst visiting our bird-banding station and learned all about all sorts of birds — and even got to release a few.

Ms. Pitaccio's class was nice enough to write to the NJMC's Mike Newhouse, who runs the bird-banding project, to thank him and to share what they learned. Some of the students even illustrated their letters. We thought we would share a couple of them here.

One of my favorites — a drawing of a banded bird (above right). Now that student paid attention!

We are posting a couple of letters below. We would have posted them all — they were great — but just did not have the room. We blotched the names to keep the students' names private.

(Thank you, Jefferson School fourth-graders!)