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Hummingbird recapture from Hilton Pond!
- To: carolinabirds@duke.edu (CAROLINA BIRDS)
- Subject: Hummingbird recapture from Hilton Pond!
- From: "BILL HILTON JR. (Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History)"<hilton@hiltonpond.org>
- Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2000 21:36:50 -0400
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
I'm pleased--elated, actually!--to announce that thanks to
color-marking, the efforts of Fred Bassett and Fred Moore, and an
e-mail message from Bob Sargent, we have one more data point to
support our conjecture that at least some eastern Ruby-throated
Hummingbirds (RTHUs) may go overland in fall migration rather than to
south Florida.
To quote Bob's e-mail, "On October 20, 2000, Master Banders Fred
Bassett and Fred Moore made a special trip to Robertsdale, Alabama,
In Baldwin County to check out a 'weird hummingbird with with a green
sash.' You guessed it! It was banded with band number T86632."
T86632 is a hatch-year female banded on 3 October at 1735 hours at
Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History near York, South
Carolina. She was marked with green dye on her upper breast, as are
all RTHUs banded at Hilton Pond. She only weighed 3.37 grams, so she
apparently had not put on any migration fat at time of capture. She
was the fifth from last bird banded this year; my latest at Hilton
Pond for 2000 was on 6 October.
Robertsdale is just east of Mobile, so it's possible this bird could
still head southeast toward the Florida Keys, but it seems more
feasible it will follow the Gulf Coast, perhaps toward Texas. BTW,
Robertsdale is 485 straight-line air miles from Hilton Pond (781 km).
This bird joins two other wandering RTHUs of note from Hilton Pond
Center. One was a hatch-year male banded on 26 September 1991 and
recaptured by Bob Sargent near Atlanta ten days later; this is
believed to be the first RTHU recaptured and released more than 10
miles from its original banding site. The other was a color-marked
bird seen (not recaptured or specifically identified, but known to be
a female) on 21 September 1997 by Judy Fruge' in Cameron, Louisiana,
along the coast.
I greatly appreciate Bob's sharing this news with me, and thanks
especially to Fred and Fred.
Details about hummingbird research at Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont
Natural History are available on the Web sites for Operation
RubyThroat ( http://www.rubythroat.org ) and the Center (
http://www.hiltonpond.org ).
Best wishes,
BILL
--
**********
BILL HILTON JR., "The Piedmont Naturalist"
Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History
1432 DeVinney Road
York, South Carolina 29745
USA
e-mail: <hilton@hiltonpond.org>
Voice: (803) 684-5852
eFax: (503) 218-0845
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 the Center and to Operation RubyThroat: The
Hummingbird Project are tax-deductible. Please visit our websites:
Hilton Pond Center <http://www.hiltonpond.org>
Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project <http://www.rubythroat.org>
"Never trust a person too lazy to get up for sunrise or too busy to
watch the sunset."
BHjr.
**********