Summers are for hummers

A few weeks ago, Jared Clarke, naturalist, bird bander, teacher, and host of CJTR Radio's "The Prairie Naturalist" asked me a question: "How many hummingbirds are you seeing at your feeders?"

"Six or seven," I said.

"So you've got 21."

I thought he hadn't heard me so I said it again--six or seven.

Then he explained. When it looks like you have three hummingbirds you likely have ten or more coming to  your feeders. Trouble is, you can't be sure until you start banding them.

Over the past month, Jared has been banding ruby-throated hummingbirds at acreages, farms, and cottages in the Qu'Appelle Lakes and surrounding area. He has come to our weekend farm south of Indian Head three times now and I finally had a chance to join him one morning earlier this week. So far he has banded 23 of them at our place and more than a hundred in general this summer. Here are some photos from the morning we spent together fishing for hummingbirds together.

Here is the rig he uses.

A simple and entirely safe trap that he suspends above a feeder, dropping the rolled up cylinder of soft mesh with a kite string from twenty feet away when a hummer comes into to drink.

Here we are holding the string and waiting (click on any image for a larger view).

In a minute we had our first bird. I can't recall if this was an adult female or a juvenile born this summer.

Jared has designed the project so that he will return to the same feeders over several years, which will help him learn about the hummingbirds' rate of survival and loyalty to breeding areas.

The bands are so small I would need a magnifier to read the numbers.

Here is an adult male. It is smaller than the females so Jared has to trim about a half millimetre off of the band or it might slip right off its foot.

And here is a young male born this year. You can see he has grown the first feather of his gorget, already glowing metallic red.

We talked the morning away as I retrieved birds from the trap and brought them to Jared for processing. If there is a more relaxing way to catch and band birds I haven't seen it.