The yard around the old farmhouse at Hilton Pond Center is criss-crossed with nylon fishing line that extends from inside the building to nearly a dozen traps designed to catch Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. When a hummingbird enters the trap, a quick tug on the string closes the door and safely snares the hummer. These pullstring devices account for about 80% of hummingbirds captured at Hilton Pond Center; the remainder are caught in mist nets deployed for general banding.

All text & photos © Hilton Pond Center

Operating pullstring traps (below right) is extremely time-intensive. Especially in the prime hummer months of August and September, we spend many hours standing at the farmhouse windows--waiting for a hummingbird to enter one of the traps. On a good day, we may get a half-dozen or more new hummers, but even in August when the local population is at its highest, we sometimes catch no birds despite manning the traps for hours on end. That's why it's so fulfilling when something finally happens to make all the time and effort worthwhile.

Something VERY special occurred this week. Bob Sargent, a fellow hummingbird bander, sent word that a Ruby-throated Hummingbird from Hilton Pond Center had been recaptured in Alabama by two other banders. To quote from Bob's e-mail message: "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 the afternoon of 3 October 2000 at Hilton Pond Center. As are all Ruby-throated Hummingbirds captured at Hilton Pond Center, she was marked with green dye on her upper breast (see photo at top); since hummingbird bands are tiny and difficult to see, the dye shows that a bird is already banded and eliminates the need to pull the string and recapture it--unless, as in this case, the hummer is seen elsewhere than at Hilton Pond Center.

Each fall, most Ruby-throated Hummingbirds go through hyperphagia, in which they greatly increase their feeding rate and nearly double their weight with high-energy fat needed in migration. T86632 only weighed 3.37 grams at banding--within normal range for a summer female--so she apparently had not put on any significant fat when first captured. She was the fifth from last hummer banded this year; we finished up the 2000 season at Hilton Pond Center with the 195th bird on 6 October.

T86632 provides one more data point to support the conjecture that at least some eastern Ruby-throated Hummingbirds go overland in fall migration rather than to south Florida. Robertsdale--485 straight-line air miles (781 km) from Hilton Pond Center--is on the coast just east of Mobile, so it's possible this bird could still head southeast toward the Florida Keys. It seems more feasible, however, that T86632 will follow the Gulf Coast, perhaps toward Texas and the Rockport area--a well-known staging ground for migrant hummers preparing to cross the Gulf of Mexico. There's also the possibility she will continue along the coast of Mexico before ending up on her wintering grounds there or in Central America as far south as Panama.

All maps, text & photos © Hilton Pond Center

T86632 joins two other wandering Ruby-throated Hummingbirds of note from Hilton Pond Center (above). 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 ruby-throat 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. Again, all these birds lend credence to the hypothesis that some ruby-throats do not go to South Florida before cross in the Gulf. (NOTE: There was also a probable but unconfirmed sighting of a green color-marked hummer east of Charlotte, North Carolina, in September 1999.)

Of the 50,000 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds ever banded, only about 50 have been encountered again away from their banding areas, so we feel fortunate that two of them have come from Hilton Pond Center. Now if we could just get one of "our" hummingbirds recaptured or recovered on the wintering grounds in Mexico or Central America . . . .

The following species were banded this week (some are pictured at right or on other weekly pages):

Ruby-crowned Kinglet--4
Goldren-crowned Kinglet--1
Eastern Phoebe--1
Yellow-rumped Warbler--1
Northern Cardinal--1
Eastern (Rufous-sided) Towhee--2
Hermit Thrush--5
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker--1
White-throated Sparrow--4
Northern Mockingbird--1
Mourning Dove--1

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