Hummingbird Banding

This photo about sums up the morning :) A hummingbird researcher let a vistor hold the bird for release after banding, this one was ready to take off as soon as it was let go, sometimes they will sit on your hand for a while after being handled.

I got up this morning at 5:10 inorder to participate in hummingbird banding. Every two weeks, a researcher comes to the station to catch and band the locals. The research station itself is an official site of the Hummingbird monitoring network, and as you can see by the photos Ive posted recently, there are plenty of hummingbirds around.

The adults are captured at the feeders, using a netting apparatus that can released by someone watching the feeders (thats what I was doing this morning). As the hummingbird is feeding, you can capture them within the netting where you then transfer them into small mesh bags for banding.

So I got to handle hummingbirds! They are so tiny and very warm (high metabolisms), some species are more squirmy than others. It was lots of fun and a neat experience, hopefully Ill get to help out in two weeks when the researcher returns.