Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Hummingbird banding in Marathon

...in November!

Today, Wednesday, we hosted bander Kelly Bryan (of West Texas Hummingbirds) who was assisted by Carolyn Ohl of the Christmas Mountains Oasis. At 9 AM the trap was set up and within 10 minutes, the female Anna's was in hand. Before the end of the hour, the latest documented Black-chinned Hummingbird (also female) was banded and on its way!

From Kelly's e-mail prior to the banding:

There are no records beyond Oct 29 for Black-chinned and Oct 31 for Ruby-throats; however I do have two winter records for Ruby-throat (Dec for one and Jan through April for the other). ... So far I have banded 58 Anna's this fall and the last BCHU was Oct 17 and the last RTHU was Oct 4.

For those unfamiliar with banding code:
BCHU = Black-chinned Hummingbird
RTHU = Ruby-throated Hummingbird

So it goes without saying that we're thrilled to be a part of Kelly's banding research. We're even more excited that we didn't lure him all the way out here and not have a decent record for him. November 10 and two species of hummers... not so bad, eh?



...captions and further explanations will be added after a supply run and a few loads of laundry and maybe another coat of paint. Our apologies!

Edit: this has also been posted over at ifoundabandedbird.blogspot.com

Edit 2: As of Nov. 13, both hummingbirds are still present!
Any folks care to guess at how long the Black-chinned will stick around, anyone?

3 comments:

  1. Too much fun!

    We'll see how long that Black-chinned stays..

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  2. Black-chinned HB continues as of 13 November.

    Anna's too, for the record.

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  3. Black-chinned continues... 14 November

    ReplyDelete