cc >> Hi, everybody.
Welcome to "Wednesday Nite at the Lab."
I'm Tom Zinnen. I work here at the Biotechnology
Center at UW-Madison. I also work for UW-Extension
Cooperative Extension. On behalf of the Wisconsin
Alumni Association, who also helps coordinate Wednesday Nite
at the Lab. Thanks for coming.
We do this every Wednesday night, 50 times a year.
Tonight, we get to have a special introducer, because his
is Kathy Miner, here from UW-Madison Arboretum.
She is the person hosting our guest for tonight.
I'm going to hand the microphone off to her and she gets to
introduce our speaker for tonight.
Thanks, Tom. It's really neat to see so many
people here tonight. I'm glad this worked out.
Tonight's speaker is an internationally known educator
and naturalist. He was twice named South
Carolina Science Teacher of the Year, and has also been honored
as the state's outstanding biology teacher.
He's currently continuing his education work through lectures,
workshops, consulting and field trips.
He's the executive director of the Hilton Pond Center for
Piedmont Natural History. And you can find that at
www.hiltonpond.org Everybody write that down,
because you can go there and sign up to get a wonderful photo
essay, "This Week at Hilton Pond," Bill is just
an outstanding photographer, so if you have interest in
things in the natural world, that'll be something you'll want
to sign up for. He's also principal investigator
for Operation Ruby-throat, the hummingbird project.
And a widely published photographer and author on
nature and education. He's been investigating
hummingbird behavior in the United States since 1984.
And he's the only researcher to conduct systematic studies of
Ruby-throats on their winter grounds in Costa Rica, hence the
title for tonight, From Your Yard to Costa Rica and Back.
So please welcome to Wednesday Nite at the Lab.
I have to think about what I'm saying there because I run a
lecture series at the Arboretum, and I'm used to saying please
welcome to Winter Enrichment. Please welcome to Wednesday Nite
at the Lab, from York, South Carolina, Bill Hilton, Jr.
( applause ) >> Thank you, Kathy.
She just gave my entire presentation for me, so I can
quit now, I guess. Thanks also to Tom for having me
be part of the Wednesday Nite at the Lab.
Thanks to all of you for coming, particularly you young folks,
because you're more important than anybody else in the room.
I'm glad you're here. Those kids did get a little
nervous when they came in and saw this on the screen, however.
( light laughter ) It's not really a test.
But they have no idea what that is up there.
The rest of us, who have a little gray around the temples,
realize that's a test pattern. Did you know there used to be
black and white television? Did you know that?
( laughter ) So it's not a test.
Everybody can relax. I'm going to go ahead and get
started. One way we could talk about
tonight's program is Operation RubyThroat, the Hummingbird
Project meets guess who? Well, alumni and friends
of Wisconsin. This is Wednesday Nite
at the Lab. And that's me, Bill Hilton, Jr.,
class of 1982. But not Wisconsin.
( laughter ) Now I know my place.
( laughter ) And I know what the score was
last year. But wait till next year!
You guys now have Paul Bunyan's axe safely here in Madison.
It isn't sitting in Minneapolis right now.
Anyway, now that I've gotten that out of the way, if you
don't like the talk, it's probably because I went to
Minnesota. If you do, it's because I'm in
Wisconsin. The real topic tonight is
Hummingbirds: From your yard, in Wisconsin, obviously,
to Costa Rica, but more importantly, and back.
And what I want to do is talk tonight about hummingbird
banding and research results from my 25 years of work.
I'm going to talk about some hummingbird factoids that you
can use to impress people at your next party.
I'm going to talk about hummingbird ecology and
behavior, how hummingbirds stand in the big picture.
I also want to talk about the connections between the United
States and Costa Rica, with regards to hummingbirds.
We're going to go for about an hour and a half.
So if you're used to doing this in an hour, don't leave.
It's going to go faster than you think it is.
I think we'll have fun as we proceed.
So operation Ruby-throat, The Hummingbird Project has been
around since 1984. And how many of you have been to
the Web site? Anybody?
That's better than usual. Let me ask that differently.
How many of you have not been to the Web site?
Okay, now you've got a homework assignment.
That's it. All right, rubythroat.org
is the biggest hummingbird site on the Internet.
And everything we talk about tonight is on there someplace.
And if it's not on that Web site, then it's on the Web site
for the Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History, which
is the longest name for the smallest nature center in the
world. ( light laughter )
It's a non-profit organization in York, South Carolina.
And we're committed to three things there: research,
conservation, and education, not necessarily in that order.
Because if people ask me what I do, I say I'm an educator
naturalist. I always put educator first.
Because there's no sense learning about the natural
history unless I can share it with people such as yourselves.
Again, thanks for coming out tonight and let me get my
teacher fix this evening. The Hilton Pond Web site that
Kathy was nice enough to mention is hiltonpond.org
so if you didn't write it down, you can memorize that.
If you didn't get the rubythroat.org
when I turn my back on you, it's not because I'm trying
to be rude. It's because on the back of my
shirt is says "rubythroat.org". And I've got a bunch of these
t-shirts, by the way. I brought a suitcase full
of them from South Carolina. If anyone would like to wear one
of these to church on Sunday and sit in the front pew, everybody
behind you in the congregation can see www.rubythroat.org
Check out the Hilton Pond site, too, because as Kathy
mentioned, on there I do a weekly photo essay called
"This Week at Hilton Pond" with photographs and text about
some interesting aspect of natural history.
It might be happening in South Carolina, but it probably
applies to Wisconsin, also. So you can sign up for that.
It's non-fattening. It's just one more email every
week, but it's a good email for you to get to remind you when it
comes up on my Web site. So sign up today if you'd like.
There's some handouts over there.
And one of the handouts is about how to sign up for this.
Be sure to pick up those handouts when you leave, if you
want something else to read. I will mention that the
National Science Foundation was one of the funders of my work.
I've had a 42-month grant from them.
The Hilton Pond Center is actually the smallest
organization in the country that had an NSF grant, so I'm really
proud of that. I'm not proud that they
discontinued funding for that particular kind of program.
That's why I'm bringing t-shirts up here tonight.
They're only $15 a piece. I have all sizes,
small through XXL. Now, Hilton Pond Center is in
York, South Carolina, which is just over the border from
Charlotte, North Carolina. A lot of people don't realize
there's two Carolinas. And if you go down I-77 from
Charlotte to Columbia, you go past York if you get on I-85
from Charlotte to Atlanta. You go past York.
It's kind of a little triangle there.
And it's right smack in the middle of what we call the
Piedmont Physiographic Province. South Carolina has a little bit
of mountains, not nearly as much as North Carolina has.
But the Piedmont is a very large section of the state.
Then we have the sandhills. This is the former sand dunes of
the Atlantic Ocean. Then there's a coastal plain
down here. The thing that marks the
Piedmont is red clay, rolling hills and a lot of tributaries,
a lot of water. So any time you see red clay,
you probably think Piedmont. And Piedmont is actually a lot
bigger than people think it is. It goes all the way from
southern New York to central Alabama.
It covers ten states. So York, South Carolina is right
smack in the middle, north to south.
And right smack in the middle, east to west.
It is the quintessential Piedmont study site, right
there. And the Piedmont is very poorly
studied. It's the most heavily fragmented
ecosystem in the east United States.
A lot of farms, a lot of small towns.
But it's very poorly studied, because scientists are like
everybody else. When they want to do a project,
they go to the mountains or the beach.
They don't stay home at the Piedmont.
So despite the fact that there's a lot of major universities in
the Piedmont, it's very poorly studied.
So the things that go on there at Hilton Pond have some real
value as far as our understanding the ecology is
concerned. This is what Hilton Pond looks
like from the air. The property is outlined in
blue. You can see it's fairly rural.
This is farmland and a former pine plantation over here.
This thing out here is what I call "not Hilton Pond."
It's not all the way on the property.
Hilton Pond is actually a much smaller body of water.
It's right up here on the top in the photograph.
It doesn't look like very much property, but it's pretty
substantial for what I want to do.
This is what it looks like from ground level.
And this is why I have a lot of wildlife, birds and small
mammals, and reptiles and amphibians on the property,
because everything that an animal would want is right there
in the photograph. First of all, water.
Big trees, this big white oak makes acorns.
The red cedars make red cedar berries.
Dogwoods make berries. And lots of shrubs down around
the edge of the pond where birds can nest or hide from predators,
or get shelter from the elements.
So that's really what you need. You need habitat if you want to
have wildlife. You don't see very many wildlife
sanctuaries in the middle of K-Mart parking lots.
So those are the things you want to see if you want to attract
birds and other wildlife. So this is what the plat looks
like for Hilton Pond. The house that I live in, by the
way, that old farm house was built in 1918.
That's where my family lives. I have the pleasure of both
working and living on the property there.
Here's the house in which we live.
And these areas around the house are where I catch
hummingbirds, primarily. And these other areas around
here are where I catch other sorts of birds.
Nature trails wander all over the property, as Kathy and her
husband know. They've been down there to
visit. And it really is small.
It's only 11 acres. But even though it's only 11
acres, it's the most active bird banding station in the
Carolinas. And since 1982, I've banded 124
species of birds here. And as of yesterday, actually
this morning at about 7:30, that's 50,472 individual birds.
Now there needs to be some noise in the audience for that.
( applause ) You should be gasping for air
when that number was read. That's a lot of birds.
A lot of bird droppings on my pants, too, by the way.
I've touched every one of those birds, put bands on every one of
them, and then released them unharmed.
Of those 50,000+ birds, 3,614 have been Ruby-throated
hummingbirds. Now there's another nice sound
back there. The sound of appreciation.
I like to use this photograph for several reasons.
One of which is it's stunning. The other is that it provides a
sense of scale. I have the most photographed
thumb in the history of ornithology.
I'm always holding my hand out and taking pictures of birds in
my hand. But notice the size of this
bird's head. This is an adult male
Ruby-throated hummingbird. You can tell because he's got a
completely red throat. But the size of that bird's head
is roughly the same size as my thumbnail.
If somebody asks you, kids, how big is a hummingbird, you can
hold up your thumb. Just about the size of your
thumb. If somebody says what's the
wingspan of a hummingbird, a Ruby-throated hummingbird, well
it's about the same. So this is the secret sign of
operation Ruby-throat right here.
( laughter ) So if you're ever walking in
downtown Madison at night and somebody starts to mug you, just
do this. Don't do this stuff, you know,
like that. ( laughter )
Just do this and you'll be safe. So the size of a thumb
is the size of the bird here. Pretty amazing.
I also like to show this picture because it gives you the details
of the throat feathers on the bird.
They have little grooves in them.
That's pretty important. They look almost like fish
scales. Another thing you might not see
here is Ruby-throats have a white dot behind their eye.
But this is an adult male Ruby-throat.
Only the adult male Ruby-throat hummingbird has the ribbed
throat. This is the object of our
affection, right here. This is an adult male
Ruby-throat hummingbird. This is the end of the summer.
And he's sort of been through the hummingbird wars, I guess.
He looks, feathers missing here, feathers coming out of his head,
everything disheveled. You know what I mean when I say
hummingbird wars if you have a hummingbird feeder.
The scientific name is Archilochus colubris, which is
kind of interesting because colubris comes directly from
Spanish, which means hummingbird.
But Archilochus means to ambush. If you've ever seen Ruby-throats
near each other at a feeder, that's a perfectly appropriate
term. To ambush.
That's what they do to each other.
And again, this bird's got a red throat.
That makes it an adult male Ruby-throated hummingbird.
Now Ruby-throated hummingbirds are the only hummingbirds that
breed in the eastern U.S. and Canada, including Wisconsin.
Now there are other hummingbirds that show up here,
particularly in the wintertime. You may some other species.
Wisconsin now has about half a dozen hummingbirds on the state
list now. But only the Ruby-throated
hummingbird breeds in Wisconsin. And here's a hummingbird on a
nest. This is in a sweet gum tree.
And the nest is made out of spider webs and lichens.
If you've ever wondered why you haven't found a hummingbird
nest, it's because they're so well camouflaged, you hardly see
it. And I know from looking at this
bird that she's sitting on the nest, not in the nest.
And I also can see that it doesn't have a red throat.
Since it doesn't have a red throat and it's sitting on the
nest, that means that there must be eggs or chicks underneath it.
So you'd be correct in assuming that's an adult female.
And by the way, this nest, there was a nest in this fork in this
sweet gum tree three years in a row.
I assume that's the same bird building in the same spot three
years in a row. Pretty interesting stuff.
Now I mentioned I'm a hummingbird bander.
So in order to band the birds, you've got to catch them first.
And most people know that the best way to catch a hummingbird
is to simply leave your garage door open.
And sooner or later, the hummingbird will fly in there.
So that rope handle that's in your garage door opener should
be spray painted black instead of red.
It makes sense, doesn't it? But I don't catch hummingbirds
with a garage door opener. I catch them, instead, using
mist nets. A mist net is like a giant hair
net, made out of nylon and polyester.
You put it up against vegetation.
When the hummingbird flies in from the side and he can't see
the net, it gets caught in the net.
We only leave them there for a few minutes to get it out.
Then you can band the bird. It's a fairly standard way to
catch birds. And if the mesh is too big, the
hummingbird will just fold its wings up and fly straight
through it and never get caught. So you've got to use small mesh.
I also catch most of my birds with different kinds of traps.
I have some traps that have fishing line going to them and
swinging doors. The hummingbird goes in to get
the sugar water and I just pull the fishing line and the door
goes shut and I catch the hummingbird.
Piece of cake. This trap's a little more
exotic. It's got a sliding door on the
front. It's being held open by a pin
that's attached to a door lock mechanism.
And so when a hummingbird flies in to get the sugar water, I
just reach in my pocket for my car door remote and I lock my
car door. It pulls that pin and let's the
door go shut behind the hummingbird.
This is what hummingbird banders do at night.
They stay up really late trying to think of new ways to catch
hummingbirds. Don't try any of that stuff at
home, because you have to have a federal permit to band
hummingbirds. In fact, the federal government
has something called a Bird Banding Laboratory in Laurel,
Maryland. And they issue to master bird
banders different size bands for different sized birds.
This would be a size zero here. That would go on a chickadee and
mostly small warblers. That's a size eight there.
That would go on a bird probably the size of a coot.
And that's an eagle band right there for bald eagles.
Every band has a unique number on it that no other bird in the
world will have. And there's also an inscription
on that band that says call 1-800-327-BAND if you find a
bird with a band on it's leg. That's pretty important.
Because there may be some graduate student freezing his
patootie off in the wilds of Minnesota studying blue jays for
four years waiting for somebody to find one of those birds.
That's a confession. Nobody from Wisconsin ever
reported one of my blue jays from Minnesota.
It's hard to write a dissertation with one bird
showing up in Missouri with a band on its leg.
( laughter ) But if you ever find a bird with
a band on its leg, by all means, please report it.
You can call that 800 number, or you can also go on the Banding
Lab's Web site. Or you can get in touch with me
at www.rubythroat.org Hummingbird bands are a whole
different ballpark because of the 3,000 active licensed bird
banders in the U.S. and Canada, only about 150 of us are
allowed to catch hummingbirds. Again, it's not that they're
hard to catch, it's what you have to do with them after you
catch them that's so hard. That's because the bands are
very different for hummingbirds. This is about 450 hummingbird
bands right here. They're so small, they're
photo-engraved on a sheet of aluminum that's so thin that you
can cut it out with a pair of scissors.
That's what I've done here. I've cut out a strip of ten.
And here you see a partial strip right here.
And then I have to cut the individual band off that strip.
There's an individual hummingbird band right there
beside the needle nose pliers. That's just a band that's a flat
piece of metal. I've got to try to turn it into
a band. So I use special tools that you
can't get at Wal-Mart to actually create the band, make a
ring out of it, as they would call it in Europe.
Now here's a hummingbird band. It's in the end of a special
pair of pliers. And you'll see there's a little
gap in the end of the pliers. That's all the gap you need to
slide that band over the bird's leg.
And you close it down and the bird's permanently banded.
Here I am in this photograph actually banding the bird with
another one of my high-tech inventions.
Oh, I won't lie to you. It's actually an index card
rolled up into a tube with a piece of Scotch tape on it.
I slide the bird into it. It's a great way to hold
hummingbirds because their wings are flat against their side.
The bird can breath because it's open on the other end.
And their legs are exposed so I can get the band onto the bird's
leg. The leg is very short, however,
and there are no alcoholic hummingbird banders to my
knowledge, because you better not have shaky hands when
you're doing this or it's not going to work right.
Here's a bird actually lying in the tube with a band
on its leg, and ready to go. Now, when you have these birds
in the hand, it's pretty important you're able to sex
them and age them. Because you want to collect as
much data as you can about birds so you can understand how their
populations are working. So here we have an obvious adult
male Ruby-throated hummingbird. Everybody see that bright red
throat? All right, you want a closer
view, okay. Same bird.
Everybody see the bright red throat?
Everybody see it? No, you're not going to lie to
me. But the problem is you're not
looking at it quite right. Same bird.
Same bird.
You weren't looking at it right. Now, what I really mean is the
bird wasn't looking at you right, okay.
If you look at this bird, you can see that it looks like it
has a black throat. Whereas in this photograph,
indeed you can see that red. And here's the deal.
This red shirt that I have on is going to look red no matter what
angle you look at it from, right?
But that's because it's got red pigment in it.
There's no red pigment in the throat of a hummingbird.
There's only black pigment. And in the feathers, you
remember those little grooves that we talked about?
There are also little, tiny air bubbles.
When light hits the air bubbles and the grooves, it is
scattered. And when it's scattered, it's
broken up into its component light waves.
And what you end up, because of the way the grooves are in this
feather, you end up seeing red. Okay?
So what does a hummingbird do when it wants to hide from
another adult male Ruby-throated hummingbird?
He just turns his head. However, what does an adult
male Ruby-throated hummingbird want to do to attract a female's
attention? Well, he gives her a full
frontal view. ( laughter )
So if anybody ever walks up to you and sticks out his throat at
you, you slap him, because he's got ulterior motives, you know,
trying to show his throat. That's pretty interesting.
There's also no green pigment in a hummingbird.
The green color is also structural and not pigment.
And it's called iridescence or metallic coloring.
Now, that's definitely an adult male hummingbird.
No question. So what's this?
Okay, adult female you say. Well, it could be.
But it could also be a juvenile female, couldn't it?
Remember we said age and sex. But guess what?
It could also be a juvenile male.
Because in Ruby-throated hummingbirds, juvenile males
masquerade as female. That's not that they're cross
dressers or anything. Quit giggling!
It's a matter of survival. Because you know what these two
adult male Ruby-throated hummingbirds would do to each
other at a feeder. But if this young male can look
like a female, he might be able to slip into a feeding station.
He might be able to feed for five seconds before the adult
male wises up and drives him away.
Five seconds doesn't seem like much, but if you do that 50
times a day, then every time you come in and feed and get chased,
you get a little stronger, a little wiser.
Your evasive techniques are getting better.
Plus the adult male is role modeling territorial defense.
So you're learning the whole way.
But if you got chased, you know, the young Ruby-throated males
leave the nest and they're kind of, you know, they fly into the
feeder and bam, you know the male just really whacks him
pretty hard, he's not going to survive.
So this masquerade is pretty important.
It's a survival thing. So what's this?
Some young males get a five o'clock shadow, okay.
This is not red streaking on their throat.
This is green and black streaking.
There's some percentage of them that look like that.
Some of them even look like this.
That's the most heavily streaked Ruby-throat young male I've ever
had. Both of those are young males.
And then long about August, some of the young males are
starting to look like that. You know, they're going through
puberty, so they're getting red zits on their necks, like this
one. ( laughter )
You can see the dark streaking there, but you can also see
there's red feathers coming in on that bird.
So when that young male leaves Wisconsin, then, and flies to
Central America, he'll develop a full red throat.
When he comes back the next year, he'll look like an adult
male because he is. He'll be down to business
chasing females. So what happens in the spring
or in the summer rather-- In the spring you know if it's
got a white throat it's a female and if it's got a red throat
it's a male. But by midsummer when young
males are leaving the nest, how would you know in midsummer if
the bird has a white throat whether it's an adult female or
juvenile male? Well, you might want to look at
the tail. Tail feathers are called
rectrices. The singular is rectrix.
The rectrices on this bird are sharply pointed.
The tail itself is forked. The inner tail feathers are
shorter than the outer tail feathers.
And there are no white tips anywhere on those feathers.
Guess what this is. It's an adult male, okay?
Look at the difference in these tail feathers.
It's rounded. The individual feathers are
rounded. And there are white tips on the
outer three tail feathers. So it's logical to think this is
either an adult or juvenile female.
But guess what? Juvenile males also have white
tail tips and rounded tail feathers.
So the masquerade is complete. Not only does the young male
have a throat like the females, he's actually got a tail like
the females. He's also bringing in a new tail
while he's in Central America. So when he comes back the next
year, he'll look like that adult male.
This is problematic. If you see a bird out at your
feeder and it's got white tail tips, don't assume in midsummer
it's going to be a female. Because if you look carefully at
this bird, you can see it's got a few red throat feathers.
So don't use the tail feathers as an indicator.
So what happens if you have a white-throated bird in the
middle of the summer. You've got to figure out what
sex it is. Well, when all else fails, all
you've got to do is look at the wing.
This is my thumb again. These are called the primary
feathers. The primary feathers are the
main flight feathers. They come off the bird--
They're numbered one through ten.
Number ten is the lead feather on the front edge of the wing.
And if you look at primary feather number six, at the very
tip of it, you'll see that if it's rounded, that's going to be
a female. Okay?
If the number six primary is sharply pointed like an ice
pick, it's going to be a male of any age.
I'm sure you've seen this at your feeders, many times, have
you not? ( laughter )
What, you don't have microscopic vision?
No, you don't. That's the big advantage of
being a hummingbird bander. But you know, check out your
feeder next time. Look for that number six
primary. That's a female right there.
There's no question about it. This is also a late summer
photograph, and she looks even worse than that male that we had
earlier. Okay.
Now, after I age and sex the bird, I do some measurements and
that kind of thing. The last thing I do before I let
my hummingbirds go, the next to last thing is I actually
autograph them with magic marker.
I've already put a band on their leg.
But I put green magic marker on their throat.
You might say, "Bill, why are you doing that?"
The answer is remember those traps?
I've got hummingbird junkies that would ruin that trap over
and over and over again. I'd go out there and I'd take
that same bird out of that trap over and over and over again.
I'd read the number on the leg and it'd be the same one as
before, over and over and over. You get my drift.
Can you see the band on the bird's leg when it flies into
the trap? No way.
Can I see that green color mark on the bird's throat?
Very definitely. So I don't pull the string.
I don't push the button. I don't recapture the bird.
Now, in science, a lot of times what we do is based on
trade-offs. People ask if that affects the
bird's reproductive behavior or socialization.
I don't know. That's why I use green.
Because green should be a neutral color for hummingbirds,
because their backs are green anyway.
But what's better? To have a slight impact on
socialization on hummingbirds or to catch the same bird over and
over and over and over again? There's some birds I could catch
10,000 times in a summer, because they're really trap
junkies. I mean, they just go in there.
They want that sugar water, you know, and I'm a sugar pusher.
So the trade-off is that I color mark the birds.
Now I will say this. When I first started color
marking, I was using red magic marker.
Then I realized I was creating a super race of all adult male
Ruby-throated hummingbirds. That was probably problematic.
So I went to green, a neutral color.
And it may have an impact, but I don't think it does.
But I get birds who come back year after year.
That only lasts for about four or five weeks, maybe.
They preen it out or the rain bleaches it out.
I recapture them once or twice during the season.
People ask me all the time, you're down there at Hilton Pond
and you band hummingbirds, and you've banded 3,600.
You must have hundreds and hundreds of hummingbirds.
Well, that's not quite exactly right.
This shows you the results of my work from '84 to 2007.
You can see that the best year was actually in 2005 when I had
226 hummingbirds. That's from late March through
October. That's all summer long,
I banded 226. This past year, I did 202.
And back in 2004, I did 210. I don't know what happened in
2006 when it dropped way down to 164.
You can see that three out of the last four years, I've had
over 200 birds that I've banded. That's pretty good, I guess.
But the interesting thing about this is I average
about 178 birds. But the trend for Ruby-throated
hummingbirds through the years has been going gradually upward.
I don't think it's because I'm getting any better at catching
them. I think it's because
Ruby-throated hummingbirds are doing really well.
And this sounds like some sort of environmental heresy, but I
think Ruby-throats might be one of those birds that benefit from
a little bit of habitat disturbance.
They're not birds of deep woods. They're not birds of open
prairie. They're birds of the edge.
The edge is where you've got grassland adjoining shrubs and
barns and trees. That's where you get your
greatest diversity of flowering plants.
Now every suburban backyard has four edges.
And people are planting for Ruby-throats now.
They're putting out feeders. I think Ruby-throated
hummingbirds are probably doing okay.
That doesn't mean we clear-cut everything and expect them to
still be all right. We've got to provide habitat for
them. I think we're doing that.
Just based on my work, I think they're probably doing all
right. The most interesting thing I
can tell you about that particular chart, though,
is that 12% of all the Ruby-throats that I band at
Hilton Pond come back in at least one later year.
They demonstrate what we call site fidelity.
They're faithful to that site. And you might be saying, well,
12% isn't very many. But when I tell you that
somewhere between 60% and 80% of all the hummingbirds that are
produced this year would die before next year, then that
number becomes very large, 12% versus 20%.
You'll say, what's happening to them, well a lot of them just
don't make it when they hatch out.
They don't know how to feed very well.
Or they fly into a picture window, or God forbid, your cat
drags it in. Some of them get lost in
migration, or whatever. Some of them are just
genetically deficient or had a disease.
A lot of them don't make it. Somewhere between 60% and 80%
don't make it. So 12% is a really good site
fidelity number. And I've got some of those that
have come back for five years in a row, which is amazing in
itself. Let's talk just a little bit
about hummingbird ecology. What roles do hummingbirds play
in the environment. They do fit in, you know,
they're not just there. They play a role.
That is not yellow magic marker on that bird's throat.
This is not some kind of fungus growing on this bird's bill.
This is not chalk dust on that bird's forehead.
Okay, I think everybody knows what we're looking at right
there. We're looking at pollen.
And where does it come from? It comes from this plant right
here, as far as this bird's concerned.
This is the single-most important hummingbird plant in
the eastern United State, right here.
It's the one hummingbird flower that you could plant that is
guaranteed to bring you hummingbirds.
It's called trumpet creeper, or Campsis radicans.
Some people call it cow-itch, because it does cause dermatitis
in a few people. It's related, believe it or not,
to the catalpa tree. It makes a long seed pod, just
like the catalpa tree does. But this particular flower is
extremely important. And if you look at the way the
pistils and the stamens are set up in this flower, they're all
up at the top rim, which is exactly the right place to hit
the forehead of that adult male Ruby-throat when he comes in to
feed on the nectar, which is way down here.
So there's obviously a relationship between long, thin
hummingbird bills and long, tubular orange flowers.
Hummingbirds, are an important pollinator for trumpet creeper.
But if all the hummingbirds died, trumpet creeper would
probably still be okay, because there's some insect pollinators.
But if all the trumpet creeper in the eastern United States all
of a sudden keeled over, I think we'd probably lose our
Ruby-throated hummingbird. It's that important.
It grows in every state where Ruby-throats breed.
This is what my backyard looks like in the wintertime.
This is my trumpet creeper patch.
A lot of people don't like it because it can get away from you
sometimes. But if you just nuke it about
every third year with some sort of atomic bomb or something.
But actually, you know, it's not that bad.
It's not a bad hair day. This is what it looks like in
the middle of the summer. And there are literally hundreds
of orange tubular flowers on the trumpet creeper right now that
are bringing in hummingbirds. And you can train it a little
bit. Some guy sent me this slide a
couple weeks ago. He's got trumpet creeper
actually trained on a fence back there.
What a great thing to plant in your yard to bring in
hummingbirds. I think it's very attractive.
People also ask me about hummingbird seasonality.
I don't have all the answers for you in Wisconsin.
But I can tell you what the seasonality is like in South
Carolina. I mentioned my banding season
goes all summer long. And it actually starts on March
28. It's the first day I ever had a
hummingbird, Ruby-throat, at Hilton Pond Center, March 28.
My guess is here in Wisconsin, you're probably a month later,
maybe five weeks later than I am in South Carolina.
But anyway, notice there's something interesting about this
particular graph. I've got a little bump right
here between early April and late April.
And then there's a lag. Then there's another big bump,
in late May. Then there's another lag.
And all of a sudden, around July 15, things just take off like
crazy until about September 15, which is an important day to
remember because it's my birthday.
I'd like to have email greetings from you this fall, thinking
about me and hummingbirds. Then after my birthday, the
bottom just falls out. Then by October 18, that's the
last day I ever had a Ruby-throat in South Carolina.
You're probably a little earlier than that up here in Wisconsin.
But these bumps are kind of interesting.
I think we know what this bump's all about.
Not only are the adult birds flying around at that point, but
there are also a whole bunch of young birds flying around.
So this is when the fledglings really start to leave the nest.
The population doubles when that starts to happen.
It may even triple if they double breed.
But what about these two bumps? Well, these are kind of
confusing. But I think what it is, I think
it represents two different waves of hummingbirds.
I think there's a first wave that comes.
And this lag is because the females in that first wave are
sitting on eggs. They're incubating and not
getting caught. And then that nest fails or
something happens. Maybe a few chicks start to
fledge. But I think this is a different
wave of hummingbirds that come back.
And the work I'm doing on the other end in Costa Rica leads me
to believe that there really are two waves of hummingbirds.
We'll talk more about that in a few minutes.
Now, remember what's happening right here.
Think about what this might have to do with trumpet creeper.
The first birds are probably fledgling, right, or at least
hatching. The first young birds are
hatching out right here. That's also when the trumpet
creeper starts to bloom, right there.
And it blooms all summer long. Until when?
Okay, my birthday. Then they pretty much stop
blooming. But what's going on here?
Chicks are hatching out, need to be fed by the female, who runs
out and gets sugar water, or nectar from the creeper, and
brings it back, regurgitates it into the chick's mouth.
And what's happening right here?
Well, migration is pretty much over by that point, as far as
South Carolina is concerned. So if that's not a relationship
between the hummingbird and trumpet creeper, I don't know
what is. I didn't use the "E" word here.
I don't know if I'm allowed to use that in Wisconsin or not.
But it looks like an evolutionary relationship to me.
It really does. All right, so, if you look
outside your window here in Wisconsin, in say July, that's
what you'll see. You'll see a couple birds at
your feeder, maybe more, maybe less.
If you look out there right now, you see that.
( laughter ) I taught high school biology for
a good many years. I taught college biology, too.
And my students were pretty sharp.
We're in South Carolina, so they didn't talk like they were from
Minnesota. They talked like they were from
South Carolina. They were very curious and
they'd ask me very good questions.
Like one question they might ask would be, "Do hummingbirds
really migrate, Mr. Hilton?" Well, you know, that's a good
question. My answer is,
"Apparently they do." Apparently they do.
I never used top science phraseology,
I'd just say, "Yes." I said, "Apparently they do."
( laughter ) Always hedge a little bit.
Apparently they do. So here's the distribution of
Ruby-throat hummingbirds, which is just enormous.
There are 329 species of hummingbirds in the western
hemisphere, and Ruby-throat has the biggest distribution of any
of them. The red area is the summer
range for Ruby-throated hummingbirds, which includes
Canada and 38 states. They get over into Alberta, not
all the way to British, Columbia.
In the winter they get funneled into a much, much smaller area.
Mexico and all seven countries of Central America.
It's about one-sixth the land mass of their breeding ground.
Historically, some of them have spent the winter in south
Florida and along the gulf coast of Texas.
And with increasing regularity, we're starting to see
Ruby-throated hummingbirds showing up in the coastal U.S.,
and even inland. There was one that tried to
spend the winter in Minneapolis a couple winters ago.
It made it to Thanksgiving, and that was it.
But Ruby-throats are cold weather wimps.
They can't take cold weather like some of these western birds
can. So what's going on here?
Well, I thought you'd never say it.
Global warming. I don't want to make a political
statement here. But you know, global warming
does exist. Whether it's human caused or
not, is I guess the cause for debate.
But wouldn't it be neat if we could prove to the powers that
be in Washington that global warming exists by using
hummingbirds as the evidence. I'd feel really good about my
work. But we're getting more and more
of these birds showing up well away from the coast.
And sooner or later, my guess is they'll going to be breeding, or
spending year round there in pretty good numbers.
We blame global warming for that.
So question number two might be from my students, "Where do the
hummingbirds go, Mr. Hilton?" And the answer is, I don't know,
which is hard for a scientist to say, who's been studying
hummingbirds for 25 years. It's hard for an adult to say.
It's hard for a parent to say I don't know.
But I say I don't know because I really don't know where they go.
But being a good educator, I try to engage the students and say
that I think I know how to find out.
And that's what Operation RubyThroat is all about, is
trying to find out, among other things, where hummingbirds go.
And historically, people thought that all the east coast
Ruby-throats, including the ones from South Carolina, right here,
went down to south Florida before they migrated across the
Gulf of Mexico to the Yucatan Peninsula.
Some of them do that. We've seen them from oil
platforms and ships at sea out there, so we know some of them
are doing it. But when I was in grad school in
Minnesota, it didn't make any sense to me that birds from
Alberta or from Minneapolis or Madison would fly all the way
across the great plains to go down to south Florida before
they went across to the Yucatan. It didn't make any sense.
That's why, really, I wanted to start looking at hummingbirds.
The only way you can really figure it out is by putting
bands on their legs, okay. So that's really why I started
banding hummingbirds. I wanted to know where they
went. So question number two, where
do the hummingbirds go, I have an answer.
Because there have now been four encounters with color-marked
hummingbirds from Hilton Pond. One of them has shown up in
Atlanta. It was recaptured by another
bander. One of them showed up in
Thomaston, Alabama. It was found dead at a feeder.
One was recaptured and recorded from Mobile, Alabama.
And one from Cameron, Louisiana, right there on the Gulf Coast,
and almost into Texas. And you think these birds are
going to Florida? I don't think so.
These birds are not going to
Florida. Some of them might, but I don't
think so. And why do we know this
happened? This all happened because people
noticed green-throated Ruby-throated hummingbirds and
reported them to the Bird Banding Lab
in Washington, D.C., at 1-800-227-BAND.
Those people became citizen scientists.
You, too, could be a citizen scientist.
You now have a homework assignment.
One was to look at the Web sites.
Two is after, let's say, oh, I don't know, April 1 this year, I
insist you sit at your kitchen table and watch your hummingbird
feeder until migration is over in the middle of June.
Look for a bird with green on its throat.
That's your assignment. That's what you have to do.
Because, you know, you are north of York.
So it's entirely possible that a bird coming through York would
come on to Wisconsin. So we haven't answered this
question where the hummingbirds go.
The answer is different than what we thought originally.
Because I do know for at least four of them.
And in science, you only need to have one to show you the way.
And now we have four of them from Hilton Pond.
And what my work has shown is that these birds are not
doing that from the eastern U.S. They're doing this.
They're not doing this. They're doing this.
They're lolly-gagging across the south central states.
Some of them might be migrating across the Gulf from New Orleans
or Mobile. Some of them might be going from
Rockport, Texas. We know some of them do that
because there's a big hummingbird festival in Rockport
every fall. And thousands of people go there
to watch hundreds of thousands of Ruby-throated hummingbirds.
They're there for some reason. They're not watching television.
So we know some leave from Rockport.
And some of them undoubtedly go overland through Mexico.
But we don't know for sure. Because of the 200,000
Ruby-throated that have been banded in history, not one of
them has been found south of the Rio Grande River.
So question number three, "Where do the hummingbirds go
from there, Mr. Hilton?" Is I really don't know where
they go after they get to Atlanta, or after they get to
Mobile, okay. I really don't know.
That's why, ta-dah! Operation RubyThroat now takes
tropical field trips. We go, just like the
hummingbirds go. And what I do is I take groups
of citizen scientists, such as yourselves.
And we go down south of the border.
And if this is Nicaragua, and this is Panama, then the country
in between must be Costa Rica. Now, when most people go to
Costa Rica, they fly into San Jose, which is the capital of
the country. They end up spending their time
lying on the beach over here on the Caribbean side, where the
water is warm, unless they're up in the forests up here.
But they hang around in the tropical rain forest.
There are 50 species of hummingbirds in Costa Rica.
And most of them are over here, but not Ruby-throats.
Ruby-throats, instead, are over on this side of the country.
So when I go, we go to Liberia, which is over here.
This is on the Pacific side. So you've got 40 species of
hummingbirds over here, and you only have about eight species of
hummingbirds over here. And the Ruby-throats are in
Guanacaste Province. So what I've done now for the
last four years, is I've taken groups of teachers and backyard
birders, and Elder Hostel folks and nature center
representatives and university administrators and people like
that, to Costa Rica. This is my first group I took.
I call them the Pioneers. I gave them all names.
They went the day after Christmas, 2004, because I had a
lot of teachers in that group. They wanted to go then so they
could use their Christmas vacation that way.
We stay halfway up the volcano at a very nice lodge that has
hot and cold running water, and showers, and flush toilets, and
three meals a day, and no mosquitoes.
And the Pioneers spent eight days with me in Guanacaste
Province. I stayed there, they left.
And a group that I call the Second Wave came in after that.
But the reason we were there was on the advice
of Ernesto Carman, Jr. Ernesto is a young
ornithologist. He's only 25 now.
He was 21 when I met him. But Ernesto was the only person
in Costa Rica that had ever looked at Ruby-throated
hummingbirds. Because there are 50
hummingbirds that are down there in Costa Rica, only one of them
migrates, the Ruby-throat. So the Costa Rican biologists
are spending all their time looking at the other
hummingbirds, because they're there for 12 months of the year.
When most Americans go down, they don't care about
Ruby-throats, because we can see them up here for half the year.
So nobody's ever looked at these.
So Kathy was right, I'm the only scientist that has ever
looked at Ruby-throated hummingbirds with any
seriousness in Costa Rica, south of the border.
Ernesto happened to have looked at Ruby-throats a little bit.
And he observed that there were Ruby-throated hummingbirds
feeding in the Aloe vera fields over in Guanacaste Province.
So you know aloe vera, called the burn plant.
Some of you probably have it growing on top of your
refrigerator. Well, it actually blooms in
Costa Rica. It's an African succulent that
they grow in Costa Rica to make juice that they ship back to
Europe, which is then converted into health foods and beauty
products that they send back to the United States.
Pretty interesting. It's a non-native plant in Costa
Rica. But Ernesto saw Ruby-throats
feeding on it. So when we got there in late
December, 2004, we went out to the aloe vera plantation.
And oh, my gosh, the aloe vera was not blooming.
Because what Ernesto had forgotten was that when he saw
these birds, it was actually kind of later in the spring.
So we got there. I had eight people who had just
come from the U.S. and Canada down to Costa Rica.
They wanted to band Ruby-throated hummingbirds, and
there weren't any aloe vera flowers.
No aloe blossoms, no Ruby-throated hummingbirds.
Well, we walked back from the aloe vera fields with our heads
down on our chests. And we came to a Jocote tree,
right beside a stream beside a bridge.
The Jocote tree has little red blossoms that are about an
eighth-of-an-inch apart. And there were hundreds of
Jocote trees. And the one right beside the
stream, not in any of the other Jocote trees, but the one right
by the stream, there were 25 Ruby-throated hummingbirds
sitting eating nectar in this one tree.
We don't know what it was about that particular tree that
attracted Ruby-throats, but they were there.
Maybe it was because it was beside that stream.
Maybe it was because a septic tank broken up--
You know, maybe. Who knows, a lot of nutrients.
We don't know for sure. But there were 25 hummingbirds
there. So we said we're going to catch
those hummingbirds. So what we did, was we watched
this adult male feeding. We saw where he was feeding in
the tree. We ended up running a trap up
the tree. Actually, Ernesto ran the trap
up the tree. There it is.
The trap is right up there. And this fishing line comes all
the way down to these two women sitting on the bridge.
This is what they had to do, was sit there, waiting for a
hummingbird to fly into the trap so they could pull the string so
the door goes shut and they catch it.
I'll be darned, it worked. Here's a telephoto view of that
same trap. There's actually a hummingbird
hovering inside the trap up there in the top of that Jocote
tree. We had a pulley system rigged
up. So we lowered the trap down and
we caught the bird, banded it and so forth.
So I was saved by the Jocote tree.
The New Wave came in after the Pioneers left, and they spent
another eight days. I stayed behind.
They came in. And we did eight more days of
field work. And we made some interesting
discoveries with the first two groups who came.
For one, we got to observe molting in Ruby-throated
hummingbirds. Something you're not going to
see on the breeding grounds, because they don't do it there.
Here are the primary feathers again.
This is the right wing. This again, is late December
and early January. And you'll see that primaries
number one, two, and three, are kind of dark and shiny, and
they're new. The next one is number four.
And number four is just now starting to come in.
Number five is missing completely.
There's a gap in the wing. And then, the remaining
feathers, which are six through ten, they look a little more
faded and a little worn on the edges.
These are actually old. So you can see that the molt is
done sequentially in that direction.
That's not something you would see at your feeders in
Wisconsin, because it happens on the wintering grounds.
Here's an adult male Ruby-throat at the Jocote tree,
and you can see he's missing primary number seven.
It's missing on both sides, which is good.
It's symmetrical, otherwise he might be flying in circles, or
something. But it is symmetrical.
And in Costa Rica, what we do, is we also color mark.
But we color mark with blue. I don't want to confuse those
birds with any Hilton Pond birds.
So I have permission to do that. I'm the only person that's
allowed to do this, by the way. I'm the only person who's
allowed to use green. I'm the only person who's
allowed to use blue. Other people have different
colors, but those are my colors, green and blue.
If you look at this board, it's a little hard to see.
This is an adult female. She's got a color mark on her
throat. It's blue.
You can see wing molt right there.
That's not a complete one. So we got to watch them.
I'm really thankful for that Jocote tree.
So we got the first description of wing molt sequence.
That was not previously described for Ruby-throated
hummingbirds. It's the most common hummingbird
in the world, and we didn't know anything about molt.
It's an important thing, as you'll see in a minute.
So, in 16 days we banded 15 Ruby-throated
hummingbirds. Wow.
It doesn't seem like many, but this is the first time
anybody has ever tried to band Ruby-throats in Costa Rica.
We felt pretty good about it. Of those 15, two of them were
adult males. The next year, in 2006, I took
a group I called the Oh-Sixers. And we went in late February,
2006. Why'd we go in late February?
We want the aloe vera to be blooming, right?
We weren't going to get shook up by that again.
So we went in late February. And here's what we saw.
Aloe vera fields starting to bloom.
And so what we did is we saw this.
This is a young male Ruby-throat.
He's got red feathers. You can't see it because of the
angle. But he's going up and getting
ready to feed on the aloe vera plant.
If you think aloe doesn't have any nectar in it, just dissect
one of them. Look at the huge drop of nectar
at the base of the aloe vera plant.
It's much sweeter than honey suckle, if you've ever tasted
honey suckle. It's really sweet.
Hummingbirds are after that stuff.
Here's a female that's being particularly lazy, I guess.
She's got her bill stuck in that flower and just letting it run
into her muzzle there. Just drinking away.
So we put up mist nets in the middle of the aloe vera field.
This doesn't seem like it would work, since they're right out
there in the middle, but the hummingbirds are so intent on
feeding that they do fly in. And sure enough, we banded 51
Ruby-throats in eight days. That's pretty much better than
the first year. But not a single one of those
birds, 51 birds and no adult males.
What do you think is going on there?
In the spring, what comes back first to your feeders?
Adult males come back. They come back and they set up a
territory. And they wait for the females to
come back. Then they impress the females
with all their aerodynamics and their great character, and they
attract that female. The males come back first.
So I think what happened is we missed the males because we went
in late February. You know what I did next?
Well, I took the Lucky Sevens down.
And we went in early February, 2007.
We're trying to fine tune the best time to go.
So in our third year to go, here's what we saw in early
February. What's the age and sex of that
bird? It's an adult male.
And we banded 31 Ruby-throats. Not as many as the preceding
year, but of them, six of them were adult males.
So it's better to go in early February than in late February
if you want to get adult males. We also saw this, however,
which is even more interesting. What's going on in this
photograph? Territorial defense.
Here's an adult male sitting on top of this aloe stalk just
waiting for some other male to come into his territory.
And he might be a young male that's just now gotten his red
throat. So he's got to practice
defending a territory. Where better to practice than on
wintering grounds, where you don't have to worry about losing
a female you're trying to impress.
You've got to practice somewhere.
I think this male was practicing territorial defense.
So this actually, is the first time anybody's ever described
territorial defense on wintering grounds for Ruby-throats.
We know they do it on the breeding grounds.
It's the first time it's been described on the wintering
grounds. We also got to see this.
This is early February, again. Early February, okay?
These primaries look different than the last batch.
This is number 2-8 right here. They are all new.
Number 9 and number 10, number 10 is just coming in.
It's in quill. It's halfway in quill.
But number 9 is old and ragged. So what's going on here?
Well, this bird's getting 2-8, and then it's skipping number 9,
bringing in number 10, and coming back for number 9.
Which is the widest, strongest feather on the bird's wing?
The number 9. Which one do you want to have
the freshest before you start migrating back northward?
The number 9. These birds have it figured out.
We don't have it figured out, but they've got it figured out.
And that's amazing. That's not something you're
going to see in the U.S. They're skipping number 9 and
bringing it in later, because they want it to be fresh.
Because it needs to be fresh. I don't know if they want to do
that or not. We now have a better description
of molt sequence that's going on based upon that work that we're
doing. But more importantly, last
year, 2007, on the very last day, in fact the very last net
check on the very last day, Ernesto brought me a bird.
His hands were shaking and his face was all flushed.
I thought he'd gotten heat stroke, or something.
I looked at the bird. It looked like it'd been run
over by a truck or something. It's an adult male.
He's in full throat molt. He's got all these body feathers
disheveled, and everything. See all these feathers on here,
and the new feathers are coming in.
And I got ready to band it, and un-oh, it already had a band on
its leg. Then I knew why Ernesto's hands
were shaking. It's because we had a bird that
was already banded. And he noticed it doesn't have
any green or blue on its throat. So I read this number with some
trepidation. Actually, with a lot of
excitement. The number turned out to be
C51517. If you remember the first year,
we caught 15 birds. So I knew, based on these
numbers, it had to be mine. But I knew it couldn't be from
the first year, because it had been 1-15.
I knew it had to come from the second year based on the 17.
So I looked in my notes real quickly.
It had been banded on February 13, 2006.
Here it was. We re-caught it in the very same
aloe vera plantation almost exactly one year later.
Exactly the same field. That was pretty exciting.
Why was that exciting? Because that's the first time in
the history of ornithology that we have any evidence that
Ruby-throats show site fidelity on the other end of the
migrational route, just like they show site fidelity on this
end of the migrational route. And why is that important?
That's important because we can protect habitat on our end all
we want to. But if we're not protecting
habitat on the other end, when those Ruby-throats from your
backyard in Wisconsin get down to Costa Rica and the habitat's
been destroyed, then they've got no place to go.
Since they're showing site fidelity, they might not respond
to that very well, and they might end up dying.
So we've got to protect habitats on both ends.
That's very strong evidence for that argument.
After all, they're not our birds.
They're only here for six months.
They're their birds, too. They're everybody's birds.
But to think of them as being your birds or our birds is not
correct. That was pretty important stuff.
So during our four excursions now, we banded, up until this
year, we banded 97 Ruby-throats in Costa Rica, okay, on those
four excursions. But I wanted more.
I wanted more. I had to have more.
I needed my fix, okay? And so, this past year, as a
matter of fact, in January of this year, 2008, and in early
February, 2008, I went a week earlier.
I'm still trying to fine tune it.
I took two groups that were collectively called the
Krazy '08s, Alpha group and Omega group.
So, Krazy '08s Alpha and Krazy '08s Omega.
We went back to the aloe fields, we ran nets and we banded
170 Ruby-throats this year. Whoo-hoo!
That's a lot of birds. It really is.
That far surpassed our initial total of 97 for three years.
Now, we did band six days each week instead of four days each
week, so we got a lot more time in the field.
But still, 170 is a big, big number.
Only ten of those birds were adult males.
So now I'm wondering, we went in late January and early
February and only got ten males. So now I'm wondering if maybe
there's not something else going on.
Maybe the adult males are using a different food source than the
adult females are using. So you know, that's another
question. So in 2008, we also caught two
more returnees that we banded one year previously, including a
female. So the bird that we caught two
years ago, that was banded the preceding year, was a male.
This year, we also got a female that had been banded the
previous year. We caught her in the same net
this year that we caught her in last year, in exactly the same
place. So that means, not only are
males showing site fidelity in the tropics, but females also
show site fidelity. So we've got to protect habitat
on both ends for both males and females.
But I still want more! ( laughter )
I'm not greedy or anything, but I just want more.
That's why I'm very happy to announce to you, my new friends
in Madison, Wisconsin, that we're going to go back to
Guanacaste Province in 2009. We're going to go again next
year. The first week's going to go
January 24, the last week of January.
I'm going to try to repeat what we did this year.
I'm going to take a second group, and then I'm going to get
real ambitious and say if we get enough people signed up, I'll
take a third group. I'm already there.
I might as well stay as long as people keep coming and we've got
hummingbirds, we might as well do it.
So you can go. I'll tell you, nobody that's
been on my trips have been scientists.
They've all been citizen scientists.
They've been backyard birders. And they've been people age
21-84. They've been both male and
female. And they've been just really
good people. All of you qualify in all of
those regards, I believe. So you can go.
( laughter ) Next January--
You will remember the January of 2008, I believe, will you not?
Well, January, 2009, might be worse, you know.
It could be worse. So when your children and
grandchildren are having to dress like this, you could be
with me in Costa Rica. Out in the balmy warm sunshine,
putting up mist nets in the morning.
And then after we finish at about 11:00 in the morning, then
we ride up the hill to the lodge and we have lunch.
And the afternoons are free. And then long about 5:00, we
gather up at the sunset lookout, which faces west.
It looks out over the Pacific ocean.
And some people get Pina Coladas from the bar in the background
and watch the sun go down. It's a pretty exciting thing to
do. You could be there, wearing
shorts. ( laughter )
In January. All right?
And you could help with the hummingbird project.
You might even get to hold something that looks like this,
a Canivet's Emerald, one of the eight hummingbird species we
actually caught besides Ruby-throats on our study site.
So, you know, you have a choice here to make.
It's a pretty easy choice, I think.
Join us in Costa Rica in 2009, and you can become part of
Operation RubyThroat. But if you really can't go, I've
got these really terrific t-shirts here.
( laughter ) For a $15 donation, or more, you
can have a t-shirt to wear. And it will remind you next
January of the rest of us in Costa Rica.
But in any case, you should be hanging a feeder this spring.
You should be watching for birds with green on their throat,
maybe blue, too. And we'll see you on the
Internet. rubythroat.org
hiltonpond.org That's it for me.
Thank you very much. ( applause )
There may be some questions. You're first.
So you have never found one of your birds from Hilton Pond
down there? >> The question is, have I found
a Hilton Pond bird in Costa Rica.
The answer, again, is there's never been a Ruby-throat
banded in the U. S. and Canada that's been encountered
south of the Rio Grande River. There's been 200,000 of them
banded now, in history. And one of the reasons is
nobody's doing work down there except me.
But now that I've got 170 banded from this year, the chances are
much better. In the first place, I call the
birds I band down there survivors.
Because they've made half the migrational route already.
So the chances of them going back again north and surviving
are much higher than a typical Ruby-throat that I band at
Hilton Pond. It's got to get down there
first. And if it's a young bird, it
doesn't have much chance. So you know, we really need
people in Honduras, or people in Guatemala, or people in Mexico,
who are doing the same kind of work.
But so far, no. Yes, ma'am?
For our own backyard, so if you do one
one year and then you have to be away...
( inaudible ) what would happen?
First of all, hummingbirds are a little flexible.
To say that if they wiped out all the aloe vera fields in
Guanacaste, that probably would have a major impact on the
Ruby-throated hummingbirds, because they're starting to
really hone in on these. But you're having a little
change in your backyard probably isn't going to have any effect.
People say, how can I know that I have birds coming back year
after year, the same birds. Try not hanging your feeder out
one spring. There'll be a hummingbird out
there hovering around the hook where your feeder was last year.
That bird is going to be cussing you, through the glass, in
Spanish. ( laughter )
Because he just spent his formative language period down
there in Costa Rica, or someplace.
But if he comes back and there's no feeder on that hook, he's
going to go to the next hook, to the next hook.
So you can do some minor alterations.
But again, if you put in a paved parking lot, then you're
going to lose your habitat and that bird may leave.
Yes, ma'am? >> How frequently do you have to
change the sugar water? >> The green handout here, if
you want to get one of those, details how to properly maintain
feeders. But to answer your question
about how often to change, I will say you should never have
to change your sugar water. Notice how I said that, though.
You should never have to change your sugar water.
You should only put out as much sugar water as those birds will
drain in about three days. Then you just replace it.
But if they're not draining the feeder, then, let's say, in
April, you can probably go a week.
But by midsummer, every third day, because it's going to start
fermenting. The secret is to know how many
hummingbirds you have and only put out as much sugar water for
those hummingbirds. Then they'll drain it.
Other questions. Yes, ma'am?
I was down in Texas one year, and it looked like a huge
migration of hummingbirds came through.
I've never seen so many all at once.
Now, they have aloe vera fields there.
Do they bloom there? >> I don't know that.
The question was about a town in Texas, which is almost down on
the very tip, in south Texas, almost into Mexico.
Yeah, a little further west. But they do grow aloe vera in
Texas and in Arizona. And I don't know.
I have been trying to get information about whether
Ruby-throats hang out there. I know they go into Arizona,
because there aren't any Ruby-throats over there.
Whether they're hanging out in Texas, I don't know.
But that's a great question. Maybe I should be planting aloe
vera in York, South Carolina. ( inaudible )
That's true, we could go to Texas and get really hot.
It's probably better to go to Costa Rica.
Yes? >> How did you know that 51517
was a migrant? >> That's a great question.
How do I know that that bird C51517--
Good of you to remember that number.
How do I know that bird was a migrant?
The answer is because there are never Ruby-throated hummingbirds
in Costa Rica during the breeding season.
They all leave. We know that from 200 years of
observers. There just aren't Ruby-throats
in Costa Rica after about May 15.
Those birds that are leaving in May might be the ones that are
in that second wave that I think probably exists.
That requires some more work that I'm going to do.
That bird had to have left. It just doesn't.
I mean, you know, it's possible, but the odds are very much
against it doing that. Other question, yes, ma'am.
Do you know the life span of the hummingbird?
The average life span of a Ruby-throat hummingbird, and
you'd only know that by banding them, because every bird looks
the same to you when it comes to your feeder.
So if you put a band on its leg and recapture it--
I've mentioned to you that I've some birds come back five years
in a row after banding. Two juvenile females that I
banded in 2002 or 2001, they came back in 2002, 2003, 2004,
2005 and 2006. So those are six-year birds.
That's not possible. Things the size of your thumb
don't live a long time. You know, things like insects
and shrews. Big things, elephants, gorillas,
they live a long time. But little things don't live
a long time. But the record for a
Ruby-throat, actually there's a banded bird that was recaptured
in its ninth year. Which, you know, if you think
about all the trips it had to have made in migration, and how
many wing beats that was, and how many heartbeats that was,
that's just not-- That's just beyond
comprehension. What is it, seven dog years
for every human year? What would it be in hummingbird
years? In the back?
Do they also go to South America?
The question is do Ruby-throats go
to South America. The answer is no.
Hummingbirds from the U.S. go only as far as northern
Panama. They don't even get into
southern Panama. So all the Ruby-throats are
in either Mexico or the southern Central American countries.
They don't get into South America.
No hummingbirds in South America?
I didn't say that. There have been five species
of hummingbirds seen in Alaska, eight in Canada, 27 in the U.S.,
58 in Mexico, 153 in Colombia and Ecuador.
The closer you get to the equator, the more hummingbird
species there are. Curiously, the closer you get
to the equator, the more flower species there are.
The more insects there are. The more bats there are.
The numbers go the same in the other direction.
The further away you get, toward the South Pole,
the fewer hummingbirds you have. All hummingbirds are native
only to the western hemisphere. There are no hummingbirds in
Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia. There are birds that play
the same ecological niche. They eat nectar and that sort
of thing, but they don't hover. All hummingbirds
are western hemisphere. They originated in the
new world tropics, and they radiated north and south.
Why didn't they radiate east and west?
Can't fly across that. Can't fly across that.
You're stuck over here. So if you ever go to the movies
and watch a Tarzan film, Tarzan is the lord of the jungle
in Africa. If there's a hummingbird
hovering behind his shoulder, you know that film is really
shot in a jungle in South America or on a lot in
California, where there are hummingbirds.
Yes, ma'am? >> Does the migratory path
follow the monarch butterfly? >> The question was does the
hummingbird migratory path pretty much follow the monarch
butterflies. The answer is no.
At least not to the best of our knowledge.
You've got monarchs also coming from over here, going down into
central Mexico. But a lot of these birds, we
don't know what they're doing. I have a new hypothesis that I
just dreamed up on the way back from Costa Rica this year.
In Veracruz, Mexico, right here, there's a big gap in the
mountain range that runs all the way down to Panama.
And I think maybe the birds are skipping through that gap right
there, and getting on the Pacific side, and that's how
they end up over here in Guanacaste Province in Costa
Rica. As a matter of fact, if you go
to the Web site this week, that's what it's all about.
Check it out. hiltonpond.org
Yes, sir? >> When we have our hummingbird
feeders, lots of times, we'll get all these bees.
The question is we're putting out hummingbird feeders and
we're getting bees and ants. Well, first of all,
if you hang out sugar water, you're going to get things
that like sugar water. That could be hummingbirds.
It could be butterflies. It could be bees and
yellow-jackets. It could be ants.
So it's pretty self-centered of us to think that if we put out
sugar water, which is attractive to lots of things in nature,
that we shouldn't allow those other parts of nature to come.
However, I know how you feel. You want to have your
hummingbirds there and you don't want to have yellow-jackets
there when you're changing the sugar water.
But put out some more feeders. And don't put your feeders in
the sun. Put them in the shade.
When you put them in the sun, they spoil faster and they're
more attractive to bees and yellow-jackets.
Also, if you have ants coming, get an ant moat.
It just looks like a lid off a can of spray paint.
It's got a hook on this side and a hook on that side.
You hang your feeder from that and you fill it up with water.
The ants come down the string and they can't get across the
water in the moat, until they learn how to build bridges.
Fishing line works. A real fine fishing line works
pretty well, because it's so smooth the ants can't crawl down
it. But you know, we need to figure
out how to get along with all of nature, not just the
hummingbird. So, keep your sugar water fresh,
hang it in the shade. And if you get bees, you can put
out a saucer of really concentrated sugar water, like
one to one, and the bees will go to that.
You move that plate over a couple of feet every day, and
pretty soon, you'll wean them away from the feeder itself.
All that stuff is on the Ruby-throat Web site.
We ought to be able to outsmart ants and bees, I would think,
but maybe not. Go ahead.
If you are in a new house and you only had one hummingbird at
your feeder last year, how do you go about getting more of
them? >> First of all, you should
ascribe to Bill's-- The question was, he was in a
new house last year and only had one hummingbird.
How can he encourage more hummingbirds to come.
In the first place, Bill's rule of thumb says you probably have
three times more hummingbirds than you think you have.
So if you think you have one, you probably have more than one.
It's just a matter of seeing them there at the same time, so
you know that. But the second thing I think
probably should be obvious. Put out more than one feeder and
create some habitat. When you create habitat--
You'll never hear me use the terminology hummingbird garden.
I don't believe in hummingbird gardens.
A hummingbird garden just has flowers in it.
I want hummingbird habitat that has the trees, and the shrubs,
and the vines, and a water feature, and other things that
will attract the hummingbird. So I encourage you to go to the
National Wildlife Federation's Web site and figure out what it
takes to make your backyard a wildlife habitat.
And you'll get hummingbirds, I guarantee.
Couple more questions, then I'm going to quit.
Yes, ma'am. >> I was in Canada, and they had
flat feeders. They were just like a saucer.
But they have all kinds of hummingbirds.
Where in Canada? >> It was up by Calgary.
What province? >> Alberta.
The question is, the saucer type feeders, first of all.
People ask me what kind of hummingbird feeder to get.
And my answer is that choosing a hummingbird feeder is just like
choosing a spouse. ( laughter )
You want to get one that's inexpensive,
but easy to keep clean. ( laughter )
So, don't buy these blown glass, cobalt blue feeders with a
rubber stopper and a piece of bent glass tubing, because they
leak like crazy and you can't clean them out.
Go to Wal-Mart and get the cheapest feeder you can buy.
Some of them are going to be bottle shaped.
Some of them are going to be saucer shaped.
Try them. Because some people have better
luck with some shapes of feeders than they do with other shapes
of feeders. More important, keep the sugar
water fresh, and keep it in the shade in most cases.
Put your feeder where you can see it.
We don't feed hummingbirds for the hummingbirds, we feed the
hummingbirds for ourselves. Hummingbirds don't need us.
Well, Mr. Hilton, I don't want to start feeding hummingbirds,
because I go on vacation for two week every summer and my feeders
are going to dry, and those hummingbirds will just starve to
death. What an egocentric view of the
universe. They're not going to starve.
They might go to your neighbor's house and hold a grudge and
never come back to your yard. ( laughter )
But they know where every feeder is in the neighborhood.
So, at that particular location in Canada, maybe those people
are doing a really good job keeping their feeders fresh.
But more than likely, if it's in Alberta, it's because there's
more than one species of hummingbird there.
Because you've got Rufus hummingbirds.
You've got Black-chin hummingbirds, perhaps.
You've got Black-tail hummingbirds.
You've got maybe Ruby-throat hummingbirds in that part.
So you might have a half a dozen different species there coming
in. You go to southern Arizona and
you've 15 species of hummingbird.
You go around Tucson and you can see, on a good day, 15 different
hummingbirds. So you're going to have lots of
birds. Here on the east, we've got
this one hummingbird, which is another curious question itself.
One more question. Okay, two more questions.
Yes, sir? >> The northern spring migration
that is occurring right now, do you think that's mostly
trans-gulf, departing from Yucatan Peninsula?
The question is are the spring migrants that are coming
back first trans-gulf migrants, or what.
I don't know. I mean, I really don't.
I have no idea. We know almost nothing about the
southerly migration. And we know less about the
northerly migration. People ask me all the time why
I don't just put a transmitter on a hummingbird.
( laughter ) Okay.
They actually make a transmitter you can put on a bumble bee.
But it only transmits for 50 feet.
( laughter ) But for a long-distance migrant,
that's not much good. This isn't going to work.
We may get technology that will show us the answer to your
question about, you know, where these birds are coming from and
going to, but for now, all we can hope to do is put bands on
as many birds in the tropics as we can.
And then hope that some of them are going to show up here in
the U.S., and tell us some of those answers.
It's the most common hummingbird in the world,
I think, and we don't know diddly about it.
I mean, we really don't. The nests are hard to find.
They hang out in two distinctly different winter and summer
sites. They nest secretively.
And man, we just don't know. The most common hummingbird in
the world. But if you go to Costa Rica
with me. ( laughter )
We could have better answers for next year's group
when I come back. Last question.
Okay, chronology is not my strong point.
I'm wondering if the years you had fewest and the most, does
that relate to Hurricane Katrina?
The question is-- I'm not going to say that you're
not good at chronology, because you probably are.
But the question is when you look at the differences in
numbers that we plot from year to year, and you compare that to
meteorological events, is there any impact.
That's the other thing Operation RubyThroat is all about.
There's a whole segment of Operation RubyThroat that deals
with something called the Globe Program.
And the Globe Program is a program in which students,
teachers and citizen scientists around the U.S. are collecting
data about the weather. They're collecting data about
bursts, green-up in the spring. They're also collecting
meteorologic data. What I would hope to be able to
do some day is to look at the kind of question that you have.
Did Hurricane Katrina have an impact on hummingbirds?
I doubt that hummingbirds have an impact on hurricanes, okay.
( laughter ) But I think, probably very
likely, hurricanes do impact the hummingbirds.
Remember that map I showed you where the Ruby-throats from
Hilton Pond are doing this. They're not going down here and
doing this. They're going across here.
Maybe what they're doing is waiting.
Maybe if the weather's good, they're going to fly from
Mobile, or from New Orleans. But if there's a hurricane
sitting out here in the gulf, in the middle of September, on my
birthday, then maybe they wait until they get to Rockport.
And if there's still a hurricane out there, maybe they go
overland through Mexico. But that's a dangerous route to
take, through Mexico. Not because they can't drink the
water. ( laughter )
But because they don't know what's ahead of them.
A hummingbird almost doubles its mass before it starts to migrate
across the gulf. It stores fat and it takes off.
They figured out in laboratories that the hummingbird can fly
about 550 miles on its fat stores.
And it's 500 miles across the gulf.
So there's not much margin for error.
But if you know you're going to make a straight-line flight
across the gulf and you have to store fat to make that, that's a
known situation. If you fly overland through
Mexico, all of a sudden, you've got all kinds of unknowns.
Are you going to be able to find a food patch when you need it?
Are you going to be able to avoid predators?
So it's actually a lot safer to do a straight-line flight across
the Gulf of Mexico than to go through Mexico itself.
So maybe those birds going through Mexico are waiting for
hurricanes to abate. Or if they don't abate,
they don't have any choice. They could be.
The question is can they be waiting for prevailing winds.
Maybe so. In this part of the U.S.,
the prevailing winds are from the west.
You know, the weather comes from the west.
But down here, you've got the westerlies, which are prevailing
from the east. I don't know.
We just don't know the answer to that question.
You know, we can follow whooping cranes with ultralights, you
know. But you can't follow
hummingbirds with ultralights. You just can't do it.
Or lead them. >> Or lead them, either one.
Thank you very much. You're a great audience.
( applause )