Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 13:30:28 -0500
Reply-To: BB for Hummingbirds and Gardening for them in the Southeast <HUMNET-L@LISTSERV.LSU.EDU>
From: BB for Hummingbirds and Gardening for them in the Southeast <HUMNET-L@LISTSERV.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: [HUMNET-L] First Calliope for Ohio (additional

TONI KENNEDY WRITES:

> Is there any way to see the data being collected on the recaptured
birds? I
>would be very interested. [snip]

and . . .

>I am not against banding done by others. I was just pointing out the
>pitfalls which can be expected and looking for answers to my many
questions.
>I am not the type of person who just jumps on a band wagon and goes off
half
>cocked. What will this banding do for the species. Will their migratory
>routes, home range, and nesting sites be protected as a result? [snip]

=======

TONI . . . .

Since this is not a lory and honeycreeper list, I'd like to come back
to hummingbirds, banding, and conservation. :-)

I've been banding Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (RTHUs) for 18 years at
Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History near York SC. It's
not surprising to me that others ask why I band hummingbirds; I ask
myself that same question frequently, just to make sure my rationale
is sound. I also think constantly about each bird's welfare when I
have it in hand, and I do my human best to make sure the birds are
unharmed by the capture and banding process.

The most common query I get from the public--who incorrectly equate a
hummingbird's tiny size with fragility--is whether I'm stressing the
bird by trapping and banding it. In all honesty, I don't know the
answer to the question because I can't get inside the head of the
hummingbird, so I resort to indirect evidence. I DON'T think
hummingbirds are unreasonably stressed by capture and banding for two
reasons: First, during the banding process and/or prior to release, I
insert each bird's bill into a feeder and 98% of the time the bird
drinks. I can't imagine that a greatly stressed bird would behave in
this way. Second, I can list countless times that I have banded and
released a hummingbird, only to have it fly right back into one of my
traps within just a few minutes, to say nothing of being re-trapped
in successive years. In fact, I originally started color marking
RTHUs with temporary green dye on the throat just so I wouldn't pull
the string on my hummer traps when an already-banded hummer flew in.

Since 1984 I have banded nearly 3,000 RTHUs just at Hilton Pond, a
single-site study of long duration. Many of my birds have returned in
subsequent years--some for as many as five additional years in a
row--and this has revealed some interesting things about site
fidelity, longevity, and recruitment. I have a paper about these
topics due to appear in an ornithological journal in February 2003.

Of perhaps greater interest to the general public and even
hummingbird banders in particular are three banded and color-marked
RTHUs from Hilton Pond that have be re-captured or sighted elsewhere.
These birds were encountered in fall migration near Atlanta, Mobile,
and western Louisiana, respectively, which provided concrete evidence
for something many hummingbird banders had suspected for some time:
East coast RTHUs don't necessarily go to Florida before crossing the
Gulf of Mexico to the Yucatan Peninsula. It appears that some fall
migrant RTHUs from York fly southwest instead and move through the
Gulf Coast states, perhaps departing for the Yucatan from the
Mississippi Delta or Rockport TX. Three encounters is not a lot of
data--but it is concrete data nonetheless, and it tells us something
new and interesting about RTHU migration.

So here's my major point: As a scientist, my job is to collect and
correlate data and disseminate my results to colleagues and the
general public. As a conservationist, it is my job to see that the
results get to the proper people so that if action is needed it can
occur. The "proper people,'" in my judgment fall into two categories:
1) you, and 2) politicians. What I mean here is the singular "you"
(i.e., Toni Kennedy) and the plural "you" (i.e., the public in
general). An individual scientist can do only so much to help protect
RTHUs and their habitats, but you and the rest of the public can
raise your collective voices in the direction of your duly-elected
government representatives. It is the politicians who really will
make the decisions about what organisms and habitats get protected.

Each of us, of course, can provide habitat and protection on our own
properties, but only politicians have the power to write conservation
laws, and they will do so only when they are informed AND when the
public pressures them to do so.

So what does this have to do with hummingbird banding? Well, take,
for example, the three RTHUs encountered away from Hilton Pond. What
those birds tell us is that if we're going to protect habitat for
RTHUs, we'd best not do it just in York SC where they breed and
Central America where they overwinter. Actually, we'd better protect
habitat all along the migratory path, which we now know may include a
corridor that could run from York to Atlanta to Mobile to coastal
Louisiana to Rockport. So, even though it may be a stretch to say
that we should set aside a corridor based on just three RHTU
encounters, at least we now have some real evidence about the RTHU's
fall migratory path. If anything, we should be banding thousands more
RTHUs every year, in the hope they will give us all the evidence we
need to demand habitat protection where it is MOST needed--since it's
obvious that politicians and the public won't go along with
protecting ALL habitat.

Banders are not going to turn over their data to the public or
politicians until they're confident those data are valid. Then
conscientious banders will share their data through publications,
presentations at professional meetings, Web sites, listservs like
this one, and other outlets. Getting published in a peer-reviewed
journal is one way banders can be sure the data are indeed valid,
that their methods are solid, and that their conclusions are sound.

Peer review is a valuable process because it puts teeth into requests
made by scientists and the public when they ask politicians to write
and enforce good conservation laws. Please join me and others in
insisting that your/our local, state, and federal officials do just
that, using knowledge we gain through banding RTHUs (as well as
winter vagrants of other species) as evidence and rationale for
species and habitat protection. As a hummingbird bander, I can't
assure you that my work will lead to "migratory routes, home range,
and nesting sites" being protected, but that's my goal and I need
your help in reaching it.

With best wishes,

BILL
--

**********

OPERATION RUBYTHROAT: The Hummingbird Project
BILL HILTON JR., Executive Director
Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History, 1432 DeVinney Road,
York, South Carolina 29745 USA
Voice: (803) 684-5852; e-Fax: (503) 218-0845

Operation RubyThroat:The Hummingbird Project (
http://www.rubythroat.org ) is a cross-disciplinary international
initiative in which students, teachers, and others collaborate to
study behavior and distribution of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird
(Archilochus colubris). All worldwide rights reserved and copyrighted
by Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History (
http://www.hiltonpond.org ) in York, South Carolina USA.

Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History is a 501(c)(3)
non-profit research and education organization, so all in-kind or
monetary gifts to it and Operation RubyThroat are tax-deductible. You
can make a secure credit card donation via Network for Good at
http://www.guidestar.org/helping/donate.adp?ein=56-2162170, or you
can send a check to the address above.

**********===================================

Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 07:06:06 -0500
Reply-To: BB for Hummingbirds and Gardening for them in the Southeast <HUMNET-L@LISTSERV.LSU.EDU>
From: BB for Hummingbirds and Gardening for them in the Southeast <HUMNET-L@LISTSERV.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: [HUMNET-L] First Calliope for Ohio (additional comments)

In a message dated 11/7/02 8:55:07 PM Pacific Standard Time,
Rrovansek@AOL.COM writes:

In the case of winter hummingbirds in the eastern US, the results of
banding have been particularly quick in coming, thanks to the relatively
high recapture rate of winter hummers. One thing that has been shown in
just a few yers of banding is that these winter hummers aren't in need of
"rescue" and, in fact, many of them return year after year to the same
improbable wintering grounds. This directly benefits not just the species,
but maybe even the actual birds that have been banded by helping to stop
well-meaning busybodies from taking them captive and keeping them indoors
or flying them across the continent in an attempt to rescue them.

I think that it would be difficult to find another example where banding
has yielded results as quickly as banding winter hummers has. Perhaps a few
examples of endangered species with only a few individuals left alive would
be the only comparison.

Ron Rovansek

Ron
Nicely worded amigo.  As a bander of passerines as well as hummingbirds, I
know of no group of folks that are anymore dedicated to their passion than
the tiny number of folks that do their research through the banding of
hummingbirds.  Almost all of the data collected is readily available to
other researchers in a variety of fields other than ornithology.  It will
take a cooperative effort of many disciplines to formulate the plans
necessary to solve the problems of diminishing populations of hummingbirds
and birds of all kinds.

The report from Dave Patton on the Ortego-Patton Buff-bellied is a prime
example.  Buff-bellied is on a special watch list (Audubon) of hummingbird
species that are struggling.  Until Nancy came along, almost nothing was
known about this green monster in the eastern part of the United States.
Using her as an example, we now have banders that have documented the
species as far away as South Carolina.

Thanks to banders like Allen Chartier, we now know that some Rufous that
were banded in Louisiana and North Carolina actually spend time in Michigan
in winter! Thanks to Fred Bassett and others, there is a proven connection
between birds banded in Louisiana and those that spend much of their winter
in Florida.  We have these bits of data now that DOCUMENT the travels of
birds from Texas to Florida, Alabama to Louisiana.  Georgia's fine new
bander Rusty Trump has documented a Rufous hummingbird in Georgia that has
returned to the same yard in Alpharetta for five years in a row.
Considering that the same yard has produced several different Rufous over
the past SEVERAL years, it was the tiny band with its exclusive number that
yielded the FACTS.  Rufous hummingbird is on that same special Audubon
Watch List.

These facts that are now accepted by some, almost without a blink, are
actually stunning discoveries that occurred only because of the skilled and
caring touch of hummingbird banders.  I confess to being a big time
cheerleader for the teams of men and women that band hummers.  I know the
folks that trained most of them, and I know the high standard the trainees
must meet before being allowed to pursue their banding research.

Each and every one of them realize that each bird touched is a wild
creature and there is always the potential for something to go wrong when
we handle wild birds.  I am amazed at the astonishing low number of such
incidents.  The Ohio Calliope was not the product of carelessness or
unfeeling attitude.  It was an unfortunate incident that each bird bander
faces each time he touches a bird.  The willingness to "suck-it-up and go
on" speaks volumes about the dedication that fills the banding community.

For our fellow Humnetters who are not banders:
You have in your midst and at your disposal, a very special and very
talented group of people who spend much of their lives doing research with
the sole purpose of protecting the future of these tiny birds.  I salute
them all.

Pardon my preaching.  God Bless.
Bob Sargent
The Hummer/Bird Study Group, Inc.