cc
Welcome to "Wednesday Nite >> Hi, everybody.
I'm Tom Zinnen. I work here at the Biotechnology
Center at UW-Madison. I also work for UW-Extension
Cooperative Extension.
Alumni Association, who also On behalf of the Wisconsin
at the Lab. helps cThanks for coming.y Nite
We do this every Wednesday
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
introduce our speaker for off to hetonight.e gets to
Thanks, Tom.
people here tonight. It's really neat to see so many
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
He's currently continuing his education work through lectures,
workshops, consulting and field trips.
He's the executive director of
Piedmont Natural History. tAnd you can find that atr
www.hiltonpond.org
because you can go there and Everybody write that down,
essay, "This Week sat Hilton Pond," Bill is justto
an outstanding photographer,
things in the natural world, so if you have interest in
to sign up for. He's also principal investigator
for Operation Ruby-throat, the
And a widely published hummingbird project.
nature and education. pHe's been investigatingon
hummingbird behavior in the United States since 1984.
And he's the only researcher to conduct systematic studies of
Ruby-throats on their winter
title for tonight, From Your grounds in Costa Rica, hence the
So please welcome to Wednesday Yard to Costa Rica and Back.
I have to think about what I'm Nite at the Lab.
lecture series at the Arboretum, saying there because I run a
welcome to Winter Enrichment. Please welcome to Wednesday Nite
at the Lab, from York, South
( applause ) Carolina, Bill Hilton, Jr.
She just gave my entire presentation for me, so I can
quit now, I guess.
be part of the Wednesday Nite at Thanks also to Tom for having me
Thanks to all of you for coming, the Lab.
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 )
But they have no idea what that It's nis up there.test.
The rest of us, who have a
realize that's a test pattern. little gray around the temples,
black and white television? Did yoDid you know that?to be
( laughter )
Everybody can relax. So it's not a test.
started. I'm going to go ahead and get
tonight's program is Operation One way we could talk about
Project meets guess who? RubyThroat, the Hummingbird
of Wisconsin. WThis is Wednesday Nites
at the Lab. And that's me, Bill Hilton, Jr.,
class of 1982.
( laughter ) But not Wisconsin.
( laughter ) Now I know my place.
last year. And I know what the score was
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
don't like the talk, it's tprobably because I went to
Minnesota.
Wisconsin. If you do, it's because I'm in
Hummingbirds: From your yard, Tin Wisconsin, obviously,
to Costa Rica,
And what I want to do is talk buttonight about hummingbirdck.
banding and research results
I'm going to talk about some from my 25 years of work.
can use to impress people at hummingbird factoids that you
I'm going to talk about hummingbird ecology and
behavior, how hummingbirds stand
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
So if you're used to doing this in an hour, don't leave.
It's going to go faster than you
I think we'll have fun as we think it is.
So operation Ruby-throat, The Hummingbird Project has been
around since 1984.
the Web site? And how manyAnybody?have been to
That's better than usual. Let me ask that differently.
How many of you have not been to
Okay, now you've got a homework tassignment.?
That's it.
is the biggest hummingbird site All ron the Internet..org
And everything we talk about
And if it's not on that Web site, then it's on the Web site
for the Hilton Pond Center for
is the longest name for the Psmallest nature center in theh
world.
It's a non-profit organization ( light laughter )
And we're committed to three in York, South Carolina.
conservation, and education, not things there: research,
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
history unless I can share it with people such as yourselves.
Again, thanks for coming out
teacher fix this evening. The Hilton Pond Web site that
Kathy was nice enough to mention
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.
of these to church on Sunday and If anyone would like to wear one
behind you in the congregation sit in the front pew, everybody
Check out the Hilton Pond site, too, because as Kathy
mentioned, on there I do
"This Week at Hilton Pond" a weekly photo essay called
some interesting aspect of with photographs and text about
It might be happening in South natural history.
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.
There's some handouts over So sign up today if you'd like.
And one of the handouts is about there.
Be sure to pick up those how to sign up for this.
want something else to read. handouts when you leave, if you
National Science Foundation was one of the funders of my work.
I've had a 42-month grant from
The Hilton Pond Center is actually the smallest
organization in the country that
proud of that. had an NSF grant, so I'm really
discontinued funding for that particular kind of program.
That's why I'm bringing t-shirts
They're only $15 a piece. I have all sizes,
small through XXL.
York, South Carolina, which is Now, Hilton Pond Center is in
Charlotte, North Carolina. just over the border from
there's two Carolinas. A lot of people don't realize
Charlotte to Columbia, you go past York if you get on I-85
from Charlotte to Atlanta.
It's kind of a little triangle You go past York.
And it's right smack in the middle of what we call the
Piedmont Physiographic Province.
of mountains, not nearly as much South Carolina has a little bit
But the Piedmont is a very large as North Carolina has.
Then we have the sandhills. This is the former sand dunes of
the Atlantic Ocean. Then there's a coastal plain
down here.
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.
bigger than people think it is. AndIt goes all the way fromlot
southern New York to central
It covers ten states. So York, South Carolina is right
smack in the middle, north to south.
And right smack in the middle,
It is the quintessential east to west.
there. Piedmont study site, right
studied. And the Piedmont is very poorly
ecosystem in the east United It's the most heavily fragmented
A lot of farms, a lot of small States.
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
the Piedmont, it's very poorly a lot of major universities in
So the things that go on there studied.
value as far as our aunderstanding the ecology is
concerned.
like from the air. This is what Hilton Pond looks
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
It's right up here on the top in smaller body of water.
It doesn't look like very much the photograph.
substantial for what I want to property, but it's pretty
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
in the photograph. animal would want is right there
Big trees, this big white oak Firmakes acorns.ter.
The red cedars make red cedar berries.
Dogwoods make berries.
the edge of the pond where birds And lots of shrubs down around
or get shelter from the can nest orelements.m predators,
So that's really what you need. You need habitat if you want to
have wildlife.
sanctuaries in the middle of You don't see very many wildlife
So those are the things you want K-Mart parking lots.
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
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
And these areas around the live.
hummingbirds, primarily. house are where I catch
here are where I catch other And these other areas around
Nature trails wander all over the property, as Kathy and her
husband know. They've been down there to
visit.
It's only 11 acres. But even though it's only 11
acres, it's the most active bird
Carolinas. banding station in the
species of birds here. And since 1982, I've banded 124
this morning at about 7:30, that's 50,472 individual birds.
Now there needs to be some noise
( applause ) in the audience for that.
when that number was read. You should be gasping for air
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
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.
sense of scale. ThI have the most photographeda
thumb in the history of ornithology.
I'm always holding my hand out
my hand. and taking pictures of birds in
bird's head. But notice the size of this
Ruby-throated hummingbird. This is an adult male
completely red throat. You can tell because he's got a
is roughly the same size as my But the size of that bird's head
If somebody asks you, kids, how big is a hummingbird, you can
hold up your thumb. Just about the size of your
thumb.
wingspan of a hummingbird, a If somebody says what's the
it's about the same. Ruby-throated hummingbird, well
operation Ruby-throat So this iright here.t sign of
( laughter )
downtown Madison at night and somebody starts to mug you, just
do this.
like that. Don't do this stuff, you know,
Just do this and you'll be safe. ( laughter )
is the size of the bird here. So Pretty amazing.humb
I also like to show this picture
of the throat feathers because it gives you the details
They have little grooves on the bird.
That's pretty important. in them.
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.
Ruby-throat hummingbird. This is an adult male
And he's sort of been through the hummingbird wars, I guess.
He looks, feathers missing here,
everything disheveled. feathers coming out of his head,
hummingbird wars if you have a You know what I mean when I say
The scientific name is hummingbird feeder.
kind of interesting because Acolubris comes directly froms
Spanish, which means
But Archilochus means to ambush. hummingbird.
near each other at a feeder, If you've ever seen Ruby-throats
term. that's a pTo ambush.ppropriate
That's what they do to each other.
And again, this bird's got a red
That makes it an adult male Ruby-throated hummingbird.
Now Ruby-throated hummingbirds
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
list now. dozBut only the Ruby-throatedte
hummingbird breeds in Wisconsin.
nest. AThis 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
And I also can see that it nest, not in the nest.
Since it doesn't have a red throat and it's sitting on the
nest, that means that there must
So you'd be correct in assuming be ethat's an adult female.h it.
And by the way, this nest, there
sweet gum tree three years in a was a nest in row. fork in this
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,
And most people know that the best way to catch a hummingbird
is to simply leave your garage
And sooner or later, the door open.
So that rope handle that's in your garage door opener should
be spray painted black instead
It makes sense, doesn't it? But I don't catch hummingbirds
with a garage door opener.
mist nets. I catch them, instead, using
net, made out of nylon and A mist net is like a giant hair
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
We only leave them there for a net.
Then you can band the bird. It's a fairly standard way to
catch birds.
hummingbird will just fold its And if the mesh is too big, the
through it and never get caught. wings up and fly straight
I also catch most of my birds Swith 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.
exotic. It's got a sliding door on the
front.
that's attached to a door lock It's being held open by a pin
And so when a hummingbird flies in to get the sugar water, I
just reach in my pocket for my
car door. It pulls that pin and let's the
door go shut behind the hummingbird.
This is what hummingbird banders
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
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
This would be a size zero here. That would go on a chickadee and
mostly small warblers.
That would go on a bird probably That's a size eight there.
And that's an eagle band right the size of a coot.
Every band has a unique number there for bald eagles.
world will have. on it that no other bird in the
on that band that says call An1-800-327-BAND if you find an
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
four years waiting for somebody Mito find one of those birds.for
That's a confession.
reported one of my blue jays Nobody from Wisconsin ever
It's hard to write a from Minnesota.
showing up in Missouri with a disseband on its leg. bird
( laughter )
a band on its leg, by all means, But if you ever find a bird with
You can call that 800 number, or please report it.
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.
hard to catch, it's what you Again, it's not that they're
catch them that's so hard. have to do with them after you
very different for hummingbirds. That's because the bands are
bands right here. ThThey're so small, they'rerd
photo-engraved on a sheet of
can cut it out with a pair of aluminum thscissors.hin that you
That's what I've done here. I've cut out a strip of ten.
And here you see a partial
And then I have to cut the strip right here.
There's an individual inhummingbird band right there.
beside the needle nose pliers.
piece of metal. I've got to try to turn it intot
a band. So I use special tools that you
can't get at Wal-Mart to
ring out of it, as they would actuallcall it in Europe. make a
Now here's a hummingbird band.
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
another one of my high-tech actually inventions. bird with
Oh, I won't lie to you. It's actually an index card
rolled up into a tube with a
I slide the bird into it. piIt's a great way to hold.
hummingbirds because their wings
The bird can breath because it's are flat against their side.
And their legs are exposed so I can get the band onto the bird's
leg.
and there are no alcoholic The leg is very short, however,
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
on its leg, and ready to go. lying in the tube with a band
in the hand, it's pretty Now, when you have these birds
them and age them. important you're able to sex
much data as you can about birds Because you want to collect as
populations are working. so you can understand how their
male Ruby-throated hummingbird. SEverybody see that bright redlt
throat? All right, you want a closer
view, okay. Same bird.
Everybody see the bright red
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. Same bird.
bird wasn't looking at you Now, what I really mean is the
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.
This red shirt that I have on is And here's the deal.
angle you look at it from, going to look red no matter what
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.
broken up into its component And when it's scattered, it's
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
He just turns his head. However, what does an adult
male Ruby-throated hummingbird
attention? want to do to attract a female's
frontal view. Wel( laughter )her a full
So if anybody ever walks up to
you, you slap him, because he's got ulterior motives, you know,t
trying to show his throat.
There's also no green pigment Thatin a hummingbird.ting.
The green color is also structural and not pigment.
And it's called iridescence or
Now, that's definitely an adult male hummingbird..
No question.
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
masquerade as female. That's not that they're cross
dressers or anything. Quit giggling!
It's a matter of survival.
adult male Ruby-throated Because you know what these two
other at a feeder. hummingbirds would do to each
like a female, he might be able to slip into a feeding station.
He might be able to feed for
male wises up and drives him five seconds before the adult
Five seconds doesn't seem like away.
times a day, then every time you much, but if you do that 50
you get a little stronger, a come in and feed and get chased,
Your evasive techniques are getting better.
Plus the adult male is role modeling territorial defense.
So you're learning the whole
But if you got chased, you know, way.
leave the nest and they're kind of, you know, they fly into the
feeder and bam, you know the
pretty hard, he's not going to male just really whacks him
So this masquerade is pretty survive.
It's a survival thing. important.
Some young males get a five o'clock shadow, okay.
This is not red streaking on
This is green and black thstreaking..
There's some percentage of them that look like that.
Some of them even look like this.
That's the most heavily streaked
had. Ruby-throat young male I've ever
And then long about August, Bsome of the young males ares.
starting to look like that. You know, they're going through
puberty, so they're getting red zits on their necks, like this
one.
You can see the dark streaking ( laughter )
there's red feathers coming in there, but you can also see
So when that young male leaves on that bird.
Central America, he'll develop a Wisconsin, then, and flies to
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.
or in the summer rather-- In the spring you know if it's
got a white throat it's a female
it's a male. and if it's got a red throat
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?
the tail. WellTail feathers are called at
rectrices.
The rectrices on this bird are The singular is rectrix.
The tail itself is forked. sharply pointed.
shorter than the outer tail The innerfeathers.thers are
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.
outer three tail feathers. And there are white tips on the
either an adult or juvenile So it's logifemale.think this is
But guess what? Juvenile males also have white
tail tips and rounded tail
So the masquerade is complete. feathers.
have a throat like the females, he's actually got a tail like
the females.
while he's in Central America. He's also bringing in a new tail
year, he'll look like that adult So when he comes back the next
This is problematic. male.
feeder and it's got white tail If you see a bird out at your
it's going to be a female. tips, don't assume in midsummer
this bird, you can see it's got Beca few red throat feathers. at
So don't use the tail feathers
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.
you've got to do is look at the Well, when awing.se fails, all
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
Number ten is the lead feather ten.
And if you look at primary on the front edge of the wing.
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
pick, it's going to be a male of sharply pointed like an ice
I'm sure you've seen this at any age.
you not? your feeders, many times, have
What, you don't have ( laughter )
No, you don't. microscopic vision?
being a hummingbird bander. But you know, check out your
feeder next time. Look for that number six
primary.
There's no question about it. TThis is also a late summer.
photograph, and she looks even
earlier. worse than that male that we had
Now, after I age and sex the Okay.
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
But I put green magic marker on their throat.
You might say, "Bill, why are you doing that?"
The answer is remember those
I've got hummingbird junkies traps?
and over and over again. that would ruin that trap over
that same bird out of that trap over and over and over again.
I'd read the number on the leg
before, over and over and over. and iYou get my drift.ne as
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.
I don't push the button. So I don't pull the string.
Now, in science, a lot of times I dwhat we do is based ond.
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?
socialization on hummingbirds or To have a slight impact on
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.
They want that sugar water, you know, and I'm a sugar pusher..
So the trade-off is that I color
Now I will say this. mark the birds.
marking, I was using red magic When I first started color
Then I realized I was creating a marker.
Ruby-throated hummingbirds. That was probably problematic.
So I went to green, a neutral color.
And it may have an impact, but I
But I get birds who come back doyear after year.s.
That only lasts for about four
They preen it out or the rain or bleaches it out.e.
I recapture them once or twice
People ask me all the time, you're down there at Hilton Pond
and you band hummingbirds, and
You must have hundreds and you've banded 3,600.
Well, that's not quite exactly hundreds of hummingbirds.
This shows you the results of my right.
You can see that the best year work from '84 to 2007.
226 hummingbirds. wThat's from late March through
October.
I banded 226. This past year, I did 202.
And back in 2004, I did 210.
2006 when it dropped way down I don't knoto 164.happened in
You can see that three out of the last four years, I've had
over 200 birds that I've banded.
But the interesting thing Thabout this is I averagess.
about 178 birds.
hummingbirds through the years But the trend for Ruby-throated
I don't think it's because I'm has been going gradually upward.
them. gettiI think it's becauseching
Ruby-throated hummingbirds are
And this sounds like some sort doing really well.
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.
prairie. They're not birds of open
The edge is where you've got They're birds of the edge.
barns and trees. grassland adjoining shrubs and
greatest diversity of flowering That's whplants. get your
Now every suburban backyard has four edges.
And people are planting for Ruby-throats now.
They're putting out feeders.
hummingbirds are probably doing I think okay.throated
That doesn't mean we clear-cut
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
right. they're probably doing all
can tell you about that Tparticular chart, though, I
is that 12% of all the
Hilton Pond come back in at Rubleast one later year. at
They demonstrate what we call site fidelity.
They're faithful to that site.
12% isn't very many. And you might be saying, well,
somewhere between 60% and 80% of But when I tell you that
produced this year would die all the hummingbirds that are
number becomes very large, 12% before next year, then that
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
Or they fly into a picture well.
drags it in. window, or God forbid, your cat
migration, or whatever. SSome of them are justin
genetically deficient or had a
A lot of them don't make it. disease.
don't make it. Somewhere between 60% and 80%
fidelity number. So 12% is a really good site
have come back for five years in And I've got some of those that
itself. Let's talk just a little bit
about hummingbird ecology.
in the environment. WhaThey do fit in, you know,lay
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
Okay, I think everybody knows what we're looking at right
there.
And where does it come from? We're looking at pollen.
here, as far as this bird's It comes fconcerned.lant right
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.
to the catalpa tree. It's related, believe it or not,
like the catalpa tree does. But this particular flower ist
extremely important.
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
So there's obviously a down here.
hummingbird bills and long, relatubular orange flowers.thin
Hummingbirds, are an important
But if all the hummingbirds podied, trumpet creeper wouldr.
probably still be okay, because there's some insect pollinators.
But if all the trumpet creeper
of a sudden keeled over, I think in the eastern United States all
Ruby-throated hummingbird. we'd probably lose our
It grows in every state where Ruby-throats breed..
This is what my backyard looks
This is my trumpet creeper like in the wintertime.
A lot of people don't like it because it can get away from you
sometimes.
every third year with some sort Bof atomic bomb or something.
But actually, you know, it's not
It's not a bad hair day. that bad.
the middle of the summer. And there are literally hundreds
of orange tubular flowers on the
are bringing in hummingbirds. And you can train it a littlet
bit.
couple weeks ago. SomHe's got trumpet creeper a
actually trained on a fence back
What a great thing to plant in there.
hummingbirds. I think it's very attractive.
People also ask me about
I don't have all the answers for hummingbird seasonality.
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
My guess is here in Wisconsin, Hilton Pond Center, March 28.
maybe five weeks later than I am you're probably a month later,
But anyway, notice there's in South Carolina.
particular graph. soI've got a little bump rightis
here between early April and
And then there's a lag. Then there's another big bump,
in late May.
And all of a sudden, around July Then there's another lag.
crazy until about September 15, 1which is an important day to
remember because it's my
I'd like to have email greetings birthday.
about me and hummingbirds. from you this fall, thinking
bottom just falls out. Then after my birthday, the
last day I ever had a Ruby-throat in South Carolina.
You're probably a little earlier
But these bumps are kind of than that interesting.isconsin.
I think we know what this bump's
Not only are the adult birds all about.
there are also a whole bunch of flyyoung birds flying around.but
So this is when the fledglings
The population doubles when that really start to leave the nest.
It may even triple if they starts to happen.
But what about these two bumps? Well, these are kind of
confusing.
it represents two different But Iwaves of hummingbirds.hink
I think there's a first wave
And this lag is because the females in that first wave are
sitting on eggs.
getting caught. And then that nest fails or
something happens.
fledge. But I think this is a different
wave of hummingbirds that come
And the work I'm doing on the other end in Costa Rica leads me
to believe that there really are
We'll talk more about that in a two wavfew minutes.gbirds.
Now, remember what's happening
Think about what this might have right here.
The first birds are probably to do with trumpet creeper.
hatching. flThe first young birds arest
hatching out right here.
creeper starts to bloom, right That's also when the trumpet
And it blooms all summer long. there.
Okay, my birthday. Until when?
blooming. But what's going on here?p
Chicks are hatching out, need to
out and gets sugar water, or be fed by the female, who runs
brings it back, regurgitates it neinto the chick's mouth.and
And what's happening right
Well, migration is pretty much here?
South Carolina is concerned. over by that point, as far as
between the hummingbird and Strumpet creeper, I don't knowp
what is.
I don't know if I'm allowed to I didn't use the "E" word here.
But it looks like an use that in Wisconsin or not.
It really does. evoAll right, so, if you lookme.
outside your window here in Wisconsin, in say July, that's
what you'll see.
your feeder, maybe more, maybe You'll see a couple birds at
If you look out there right now, less.
( laughter ) you see that.
a good many years. I taught high school biology for
And my students were pretty I taught colsharp.iology, too.
We're in South Carolina, so they
Minnesota. didn't talk like they were from
South Carolina. TheThey were very curious andom
they'd ask me very good questions.
Like one question they might ask
really migrate, Mr. Hilton?" would be, "Do hummingbirds
question. Well, yoMy answer is,s a good
"Apparently they do." Apparently they do.
I never used top science
I'd just say, "Yes." phraseology,
( laughter ) I said, "Apparently they do."
Apparently they do. So here's the distribution of
Ruby-throat hummingbirds, which is just enormous.
There are 329 species of
hemisphere, and Ruby-throat has the biggest distribution of any
of them.
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
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
And with increasing regularity, we're starting to see
Ruby-throated hummingbirds
and even inland. showing up in the coastal U.S.,
spend the winter in Minneapolis Thea couple winters ago. to
It made it to Thanksgiving, and that was it.
But Ruby-throats are cold weather wimps.
They can't take cold weather
can. like some of these western birds
Well, I thought you'd never say So what's it.ng on here?
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
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
And sooner or later, my guess is away from the coast.
spending year round there in they'll going to be breeding, or
We blame global warming for pretty that.numbers.
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
hummingbirds for 25 years. say, who's been studying
It's hard for a parent It's hard for an adult to say.
But I say I don't know because I to say I don't know.
But being a good educator, I try really don't know where they go.
that I think I know how to find to engage theout.dents and say
And that's what Operation RubyThroat is all about, is
trying to find out, among other things, where hummingbirds go.
And historically, people
Ruby-throats, including the ones thought that all the east coast
went down to south Florida from South Carolina, right here,
Gulf of Mexico to the Yucatan before theyPeninsula.across the
Some of them do that. We've seen them from oil
platforms and ships at sea out
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
across the great plains to go Mdown to south Florida before
they went across to the Yucatan.
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.
banding hummingbirds. SI wanted to know where theyed
went. So question number two, where
do the hummingbirds go, I have
Because there have now been four an answer.
hummingbirds from Hilton Pond. encounters with color-marked
Atlanta. One of them has shown up in
bander. ItOne of them showed up iner
Thomaston, Alabama. It was found dead at a feeder.
One was recaptured and recorded from Mobile, Alabama.
And one from Cameron, Louisiana,
and almost into Texas. right there on the Gulf Coast,
going to Florida? And yoI don't think so.ds are
I don't think so. These birds are not going to
Florida.
think so. SomeAnd why do we know thison't
happened? This all happened because people
noticed green-throated
reported them to the Bird Ruby-throBanding Labgbirds and
in Washington, D.C.,
Those people became citizen at scientists.AND.
You, too, could be a citizen
You now have a homework assignment.
One was to look at the Web
Two is after, let's say, oh, I sites.
insist you sit at your kitchen don't know, April 1 this year, I
feeder until migration is over table and watch your hummingbird
Look for a bird with green on in thits throat. June.
That's your assignment. That's what you have to do.
Because, you know, you are north
So it's entirely possible that a of York.
come on to Wisconsin. bSo we haven't answered thisld
question where the hummingbirds go.
The answer is different than
Because I do know for at least what we thought originally.
And in science, you only need to four of them.
And now we have four of them have one to show you the way.
And what my work has shown is that these birds are not
doing that from the eastern U.S.
They're not doing this. They're doing this.
They're lolly-gagging across the
Some of them might be migrating across the Gulf from New Orleans
or Mobile.
Rockport, Texas. Some of them might be going from
because there's a big hummingbird festival in Rockport
every fall. And thousands of people go there
to watch hundreds of thousands
They're there for some reason. of Ruby-throated hummingbirds.
So we know some leave from They're not watching television.
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
them has been found south of the banded in history, not one of
So question number three, "Where do the hummingbirds go
from there, Mr. Hilton?"
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.
of citizen scientists, such as And what I do is I take groups
And we go down south of the yoborder.s.
And if this is Nicaragua, and this is Panama, then the country
in between must be Costa Rica.
Costa Rica, they fly into San Jose, which is the capital of
the country.
lying on the beach over here on Tthe Caribbean side, where thee
water is warm, unless they're up
But they hang around in the itropical 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.
hummingbirds over here, and you only have about eight species of
hummingbirds over here. And the Ruby-throats are in
Guanacaste Province.
last four years, is I've taken So what I've done now for the
birders, and Elder Hostel folks groups and nature centerackyard
representatives and university
that, to Costa Rica. administrators and people like
I call them the Pioneers. ThisI gave them all names.ook.
They went the day after Christmas, 2004, because I had a
lot of teachers in that group.
could use their Christmas They wvacation that way.o they
We stay halfway up the volcano
hot and cold running water, and showers, and flush toilets, and
three meals a day, and no mosquitoes.
And the Pioneers spent eight
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
of Ernesto Carman, Jr. on the advice
ornithologist. Ernesto is a young
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
migrates, the Ruby-throat. in Costa Rica, only one of them
are spending all their time So thlooking at the otherists
hummingbirds, because they're there for 12 months of the year.
When most Americans go down,
Ruby-throats, because we can see they don't care about
So nobody's ever looked at them up here for half the year.
So Kathy was right, I'm the only scientist that has ever
looked at Ruby-throated hummingbirds with any
seriousness in Costa Rica, south
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
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.
December, 2004, we went out to So when we got there in late
And oh, my gosh, the aloe vera the aloe vera plantation.
Because what Ernesto had was not blooming.
these birds, it was actually forgotten was that when he saw
So we got there. kind of later in the spring.
come from the U.S. and Canada I had down to Costa Rica.d just
They wanted to band Ruby-throated hummingbirds, and
there weren't any aloe vera flowers.
No aloe blossoms, no
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
The Jocote tree has little red a bridge.
eighth-of-an-inch apart. blossoms that are about an
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
sitting eating nectar in this Ruby-throne tree.mingbirds
We don't know what it was about that particular tree that
attracted Ruby-throats, but they
Maybe it was because it was beside that stream.
Maybe it was because a septic tank broken up--
You know, maybe.
We don't know for sure. But there were 25 hummingbirds
there.
those hummingbirds. SSo what we did, was we watched
this adult male feeding.
the tree. We ended up running a trap upn
the tree. Actually, Ernesto ran the trap
up the tree.
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
hummingbird to fly into the trap sit there, waiting for a
the door goes shut and they so they coucatch it.he string so
I'll be darned, it worked.
same trap. Here's a telephoto view of that
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
The New Wave came in after the tree.
another eight days. PioneerI stayed behind. spent
They came in. And we did eight more days of
field work. And we made some interesting
discoveries with the first two
For one, we got to observe groups who came.
hummingbirds. Something you're not going to
see on the breeding grounds,
Here are the primary feathers because they again.do it there.
This is the right wing. This again, is late December
and early January.
number one, two, and three, are Akind of dark and shiny, ands
they're new.
And number four is just now The starting to come in.our.
Number five is missing
There's a gap in the wing. completely.
feathers, which are six through ten, they look a little more
faded and a little worn on the
These are actually old. So you can see that the molt is
done sequentially in that direction.
That's not something you would
Wisconsin, because it happens on the wintering grounds.
Here's an adult male
and you can see he's missing Ruby-throat at the Jocote tree,
It's missing on both sides, primwhich is good.en.
It's symmetrical, otherwise he
something. might be flying in circles, or
And in Costa Rica, what we do, But it is symmetrical.
But we color mark with blue. is we also color mark.
birds with any Hilton Pond I don't want to confuse those
So I have permission to do that. birds.
allowed to do this, by the way. I'm the only person who'ss
allowed to use green. I'm the only person who's
allowed to use blue.
colors, but those are my colors, Other people have different
If you look at this board, it's a little hard to see.
This is an adult female.
throat. She's got It's blue.rk on her
You can see wing molt right there.
That's not a complete one.
I'm really thankful for that So we got to watch them.
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
It's an important thing, as you'll see in a minute.
So, in 16 days
hummingbirds. we banded 1Wow.by-throated
It doesn't seem like many,
anybody has ever tried to band but this is the first time
We felt pretty good about it. Of those 15, two of them were
adult males.
a group I called the Oh-Sixers. And we went in late February,k
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
So we went in late February. by that again.
Aloe vera fields starting to And here's what we saw.
And so what we did is we saw bloom.
This is a young male this.
He's got red feathers. Ruby-throat.
angle. You can't see it because of the
ready to feed on the aloe vera But he's going up and getting
If you think aloe doesn't have plant.
one of them. any nectar in it, just dissect
at the base of the aloe vera Look at the huge drop of nectar
It's much sweeter than honey plant.
honey suckle. suckleIt's really sweet.asted
Hummingbirds are after that stuff.
Here's a female that's being
She's got her bill stuck in that particularly lazy, I guess.
into her muzzle there. flower and just letting it run
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
feeding that they do fly in. hummingbirds are so intent on
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
What do you think is going on there?
In the spring, what comes back
Adult males come back. first to your feeders?
territory. They come back and they set up a
come back. And they wait for the females to
with all their aerodynamics and their great character, and they
attract that female.
So I think what happened is we The males come back first.
in late February. misYou know what I did next?went
Well, I took the Lucky Sevens down.
And we went in early February,
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.
year, but of them, six of them Not as many as the preceding
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
And he might be a young male come into his territory.
throat. thaSo he's got to practice red
defending a territory.
wintering grounds, where you Where better to practice than on
a female you're trying to don't have timpress.about losing
You've got to practice
I think this male was practicing somewhere.
So this actually, is the first territorial defense.
territorial defense on wintering time anybody's ever described
We know they do it on the groubreeding grounds.ats.
It's the first time it's been described on the wintering
grounds.
This is early February, again. We also got to see this.
These primaries look different Early February, okay?
This is number 2-8 right here. than the last batch.
Number 9 and number 10, number They are all new.
It's in quill. 10 is just coming in.
But number 9 is old and ragged. So what's going on here?
Well, this bird's getting 2-8,
bringing in number 10, and and then it's skipping number 9,
Which is the widest, strongest coming back for number 9.
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.
bringing it in later, because Ththey want it to be fresh.nd
Because it needs to be fresh. I don't know if they want to do
that or not.
of molt sequence that's going on We now have a better description
doing. based upon that work that we're
year, 2007, on the very last But more importantly, last
check on the very last day, daErnesto brought me a bird.et
His hands were shaking and his
I thought he'd gotten heat face was all flushed.
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.
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.
trepidation. So I read this number with some
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
I knew it had to come from the been 1-15.
So I looked in my notes real second year based on the 17.
It had been banded on February quickly.
Here it was. 13, 2006.
aloe vera plantation almost We rexactly one year later. same
Exactly the same field. That was pretty exciting.
Why was that exciting?
the history of ornithology that Becwe have any evidence thate in
Ruby-throats show site fidelity on the other end of the
migrational route, just like
end of the migrational route. theAnd why is that important?is
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
backyard in Wisconsin get down those Ruby-throats from your
been destroyed, then they've got to Costa Rica and the habitat's
Since they're showing site no place to go.
to that very well, and they fidelimight end up dying.respond
So we've got to protect habitats on both ends.
That's very strong evidence for that argument.
After all, they're not our
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.
So during our four excursions Tnow, we banded, up until thisf.
year, we banded 97 Ruby-throats in Costa Rica, okay, on those
four excursions.
I wanted more. But I wanted more.
I needed my fix, okay? I had to have more.
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
We went back to the aloe fields, and Krazy '08s Omega.
170 Ruby-throats this year. we ran nWhoo-hoo!e banded
That's a lot of birds.
That far surpassed our initial It really is.
Now, we did band six days each total of 97 for three years.
week, so we got a lot more time week insin the field.days each
But still, 170 is a big, big
Only ten of those birds were number.
So now I'm wondering, we went in late January and early
February and only got ten males.
there's not something else going So now I'm wondering if maybe
Maybe the adult males are using a different food source than the
adult females are using.
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
This year, we also got a female prthat had been banded the.
previous year.
this year that we caught her in last year, in exactly the same
place.
males showing site fidelity in So that means, not only are
show site fidelity. So we've got to protect habitat
on both ends for both males and females.
But I still want more!
I'm not greedy or anything, but (I just want more.
That's why I'm very happy to
in Madison, Wisconsin, that annwe're going to go back tonds
Guanacaste Province in 2009.
year. The first week's going to go
January 24, the last week of
I'm going to try to repeat what we did this year.
I'm going to take a second
real ambitious and say if we get group, and then I'm going to get
take a third group. enoughI'm already there. I'll
I might as well stay as long as people keep coming and we've got
hummingbirds, we might as well
So you can go. do it.
been on my trips have been I'll tell you, nobody that's
They've all been citizen scientists.
They've been backyard birders. scientists.
21-84. And they've been people age
female. And they've been just really
good people.
those regards, I believe. All of So you can go. all of
( laughter )
You will remember the January of Next January--
Well, January, 2009, might be 2008, Iworse, you know.ou not?
It could be worse.
grandchildren are having to dress like this, you could be
with me in Costa Rica.
putting up mist nets in the Out in the bmorning.m sunshine,
And then after we finish at about 11:00 in the morning, then
we ride up the hill to the lodge
And the afternoons are free. and we have lunch.
gather up at the sunset lookout, And then long about 5:00, we
It looks out over the Pacific which ocean.west.
And some people get Pina Coladas
and watch the sun go down. from the bar in the background
do. ItYou could be there, wearingto
shorts. ( laughter )
In January. All right?
And you could help with the hummingbird project.
You might even get to hold
a Canivet's Emerald, one of the soeight 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
Join us in Costa Rica in 2009, think.
Operation RubyThroat. But if you really can't go, I've
got these really terrific t-shirts here.
( laughter )
can have a t-shirt to wear. FoAnd it will remind you nextyou
January of the rest of us in
But in any case, you should be Costa Rica.
You should be watching for birds hanging a feeder this spring.
maybe blue, too. with green on their throat,
Internet. And wrubythroat.orgn the
hiltonpond.org
Thank you very much. That's it for me.
There may be some questions. ( applause )
So you have never found one of your birds from Hilton Pond
down there? >> The question is, have I found
a Hilton Pond bird
The answer, again, is there's never been a Ruby-throat
banded in the U. S. and Canada
south of the Rio Grande River. that's been encountered
banded now, in history. TAnd one of the reasons isem
nobody's doing work down there
But now that I've got 170 banded except me.
much better. from this year, the chances are
birds I band down there In the firsurvivors.I call the
Because they've made half the migrational route already.
So the chances of them going
are much higher than a typical back again north and surviving
Hilton Pond. Ruby-throat that I band at
first. It's got to get down there
doesn't have much chance. So you know, we really needt
people in Honduras, or people in
who are doing the same kind of Guatemala, or people in Mexico,
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
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.
change in your backyard probably But you're having a little
People say, how can I know that iI 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
That bird is going to be cussing where your feeder was last year.
Spanish. you, through the glass, in
Because he just spent his formative language period down
there in Costa Rica, or someplace.
But if he comes back and there's
going to go to the next hook, to no feeder on that hook, he's
So you can do some minor the next hook.
But again, if you put in a alterations.
going to lose your habitat and paved parking lot, then you're
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.
about how often to change, I But to answer your question
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.
But if they're not draining the feeder, then, let's say, in
April, you can probably go a
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
those hummingbirds. put oThen they'll drain it. for
Other questions.
I was down in Texas one year, and it looked like a huge
migration of hummingbirds came
I've never seen so many all at through.
Now, they have aloe vera fields there.
Do they bloom there?
The question was about a town in >> I don't know that.
the very tip, in south Texas, Texasalmost into Mexico.own on
Yeah, a little further west.
Texas and in Arizona. But thAnd I don't know.era in
I have been trying to get information about whether
Ruby-throats hang out there.
because there aren't any I know they go into Arizona,
Whether they're hanging out in Ruby-throats over there.
But that's a great question. Texas, I don't know.
vera in York, South Carolina. Maybe ( inaudible )lanting aloe
That's true, we could go
It's probably better to Texas and get really hot.
Yes? to go to Costa Rica.
was a migrant? >> How did you know that 51517
How do I know that that bird >> That's a great question.
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
They all leave. We know that from 200 years of
observers.
in Costa Rica after about May There just ar15.t Ruby-throats
Those birds that are leaving in May might be the ones that are
in that second wave that I think
That requires some more work probably exists.
That bird had to have left. thaIt just doesn't.o.
I mean, you know, it's possible,
against it doing that. but the odds are very much
Do you know the life span Otheof the hummingbird?'am.
The average life span of a
you'd only know that by banding them, because every bird looks
the same to you when it comes to
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
2005 and 2006. came back in 2002, 2003, 2004,
That's not possible. So those are six-year birds.
don't live a long time. You know, things like insects
and shrews. Big things, elephants, gorillas,
they live a long time.
a long time. But little things don't live
Ruby-throat, actually there's a banded bird that was recaptured
in its ninth year.
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.
for every human year? What would it be in hummingbird
years?
Do they also go to In the back?
The question is do South America?
to South America. The answer is no.
Hummingbirds from the U.S.
Panama. gThey don't even get inton
southern Panama.
in either Mexico or the southern So all the Ruby-throats are
They don't get into CentralSouth America.tries.
No hummingbirds in South America?
I didn't say that.
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.
to the equator, the more Curiously, the closer you get
The more insects there are. fThe 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.
only to the western hemisphere. There are no hummingbirds in
Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia.
the same ecological niche. There are birds that play
of thing, but they don't hover. They eaAll hummingbirdst sort
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.
You're stuck over here. So if you ever go to the movies
and watch a Tarzan film,
in Africa. Tarzan is the lord of the jungle
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
butterflies. pretty much follow the monarch
At least not to the best of our The knowledge.no.
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.
just dreamed up on the way back I from Costa Rica this year. I
In Veracruz, Mexico, right here,
mountain range that runs all the there's a big gap in the
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
Rica. As a matter of fact, if you go
to the Web site this week,
Check it out. that's hiltonpond.orgabout.
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.
if you hang out sugar water, Well, first of all,
that like sugar water. you're going to get things
It could be butterflies. That could be hummingbirds.
yellow-jackets. IIt could be ants.nd
So it's pretty self-centered of us to think that if we put out
sugar water, which is attractive
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
there when you're changing want to have yellow-jackets
But put out some more feeders. the sugar water.
the sun. And don't put your feeders in
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,
It just looks like a lid off a get an ant moat.
It's got a hook on this side and can of spray paint.
You hang your feeder from that a hook on that side.
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
it. But you know, we need to figuren
out how to get along with all of
hummingbird. nature, not just the
hang it in the shade. And if you get bees, you can put
out a saucer of really
one to one, and the bees will go concentrated sugar water, like
You move that plate over a to that.
pretty soon, you'll wean them caway from the feeder itself.
All that stuff is on the
We ought to be able to outsmart ants and bees, I would think,
but maybe not.
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
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
you know that. them there at the same time, so
probably should be obvious. Put out more than one feeder and
create some habitat.
You'll never hear me use the When you create habitat--
I don't believe in hummingbird terminology hummingbird garden.
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
will attract the hummingbird. So I encourage you to go to the
National Wildlife Federation's
takes to make your backyard a Web sitwildlife habitat.what it
And you'll get hummingbirds, I
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
Where in Canada? hummingbirds.
What province? >> It was up by Calgary.
The question is, the saucer type feeders, first of all.
People ask me what kind of
And my answer is that choosing a hummingbird feeder to get.
choosing a spouse. hummingbird feeder is just like
You want to get one that's inexpensive,
but easy to keep clean. ( laughter )
So, don't buy these blown glass,
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
Some of them are going to be cheapest feeder you can buy.
Some of them are going to be bottle shaped.
Try them. Because some people have better
luck with some shapes of feeders
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
hummingbirds for ourselves. tHummingbirds don't need us.e
Well, Mr. Hilton, I don't want
because I go on vacation for two to start feeding hummingbirds,
are going to dry, and those hummingbirds will just starve to
death.
universe. WThey're not going to starve.e
They might go to your neighbor's
never come back to your yard. hous( laughter ) grudge and
But they know where every feeder
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
more than one species of Alberta, it's because there's
Because you've got Rufus hummingbird there.
You've got Black-chin hummingbirds, perhaps.
You've got Black-tail hummingbirds.
You've got maybe Ruby-throat
So you might have a half a dozen hummingbirds in that part.
in. You go to southern Arizona and
you've 15 species of
You go around Tucson and you can hummingbird.
hummingbirds. So you're going to have lots oft
birds.
this one hummingbird, which is Here on the east, we've got
One more question. another curious question itself.
Yes, sir? >> The northern spring migration
that is occurring right now, do you think that's mostly
trans-gulf, departing from
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.
northerly migration. And we know less about the
I don't just put a transmitter People ask me all the time why
( laughter ) on a hummingbird.
They actually make a transmitter Okay.
But it only transmits you can for 50 feet.ble bee.
( laughter )
that's not much good. ButThis isn't going to work.ant,
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
I think, and we don't know hummingbird in the world,
I mean, we really don't. diddly about it.
They hang out in two distinctly different winter and summer
sites.
And man, we just don't know. They nest secretively.
the world. The most common hummingbird in
with me. But if you go to Costa Rica
We could have better answers ( laughter )
when I come back. for Last question.oup
Okay, chronology is not my
I'm wondering if the years you strong point.
that relate to Hurricane had fewest and the most, does
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
numbers that we plot from year look at the differences in
meteorological events, is there to year, aany impact.are that to
That's the other thing Operation
There's a whole segment of RubyThroat is all about.
with something called the Globe Operation RuProgram. that deals
And the Globe Program is a
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.
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
( laughter ) an impact on hurricanes, okay.
likely, hurricanes do impact the But I think, probably very
Remember that map I showed you hummingbirds.
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,
Mobile, or from New Orleans. they're going to fly from
sitting out here in the gulf, in But if there's a hurricane
birthday, then maybe they wait the middle of September, on my
And if there's still a hurricane until they get to Rockport.
overland through Mexico. out there, maybe they go
take, through Mexico. Not because they can't drink the
water.
But because they don't know what's ahead of them.
A hummingbird almost doubles its
across the gulf. mass before it starts to migrate
They figured out in laboratories It stores fat and it takes off.
about 550 miles on its fat that the hummingbird can fly
And it's 500 miles across the sgulf..
So there's not much margin for
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.
Mexico, all of a sudden, you've Igot all kinds of unknowns.
Are you going to be able to find
Are you going to be able to a food avoid predators?eed it?
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
hurricanes to abate. through Mexico are waiting for
they don't have any choice. Or ifThey could be.ate,
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
But down here, you've got the westerlies, which are prevailing
from the east.
We just don't know the answer to I don't know.
You know, we can follow whooping that question.
know. cranBut you can't follow you
hummingbirds with ultralights.
Or lead them. >> Or lead them, either one.
Thank you very much.
( applause You're a great audience.
)