I have been offline for a while, doing a lot of different things, including banding hummingbirds. I got a late start, not banding any until late June, but I made up some ground and have banded more this summer than in any previous summer, with 364 banded. Of course, to compare with other years, the number of birds per trap-hour is the best measurement, and this summer's 6.5 per trap hour is perhaps slightly below average. Some banding sites have had greater numbers than usual, while a couple of sites have produced far fewer birds than normal. This seems to be the case every summer, with local ups-and-downs for one summer at most. At the end of September, I'll have a better idea of how the numbers stack up.
On July 25, the Third Annual Michigan Hummingbird Festival was held at the River Lake Inn Restaurant near Colon, and good crowds estimated at 700+ turned out, and a record 51 hummingbirds was banded, in addition to 5 recaptured that were banded in previous years (3 from 2008, 2 from 2007 and 1 from 2006).
3 comments:
You know, we can send people to the moon and soon to mars, we can pack a TB of digital storage in a space the size of a matchbox, we have invented aeroplanes, built the pyramids and all sorts of neat things, but what still amazes me the most is that we can actually band/ring birds as delicate as hummers. Just wait - soon we'll be satellite tracking them!
Jochen,
Some RFID tags are tiny enough to be attached to the hummingbird bands, but they can only transmit about 30-yards.
Allen,
you see, we are getting there: from 30 yards to 300 miles is just a tiny step.
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