Hummingbird Banding

Can you imagine that those little tykes actually carry around a band on their legs?  There is a scientist in Patagonia, Arizona who founded a Hummingbird monitoring network all over the west coast.  On certain days during the year each of these locations along with "citizen scientists" spend 5 hours capturing, inspecting, weighing, measuring, putting an ID band and releasing hummingbirds!  The data is fed back to central location.  The days and times are the same for each location.

Magnificent Hummingbird

Beginning at sunrise the first Sunday in April and continuing  every other Sunday through September, one of these locations in Paradise, Arizona at the George Walker House does this.  We were here last year the first Sunday in April and happened to be here again this year on the first Sunday.  Because we had to wait to move our RV to a new location (see tomorrow for this story), we were late to the party today.  I got a photo of a Juniper Titmouse and a Bullocks Oriole, and did manage to snag some good photos of the process of a Magnificent Hummingbird. Turns out this bird had been captured before so did not need a new band. The process is similar.  Read the captions on each photo for descriptions and click on photo to enlarge.  Quite interesting.

NOTE:  No birds or humans were harmed in this process.

The trap used to capture the hummer.  When the hummer
enters the feeding area, a line is pulled

Reaching in gently to wrap hand carefully around the bird

In the grasp.  Same guy does all of them

Brings out the bird and carefully places in bag

"Bagged" another one!

Tools of the trade.  Note the numbered bands on the left.

Removing the hummer safely from the bag.

Inspecting an recording the band number

inspecting another bird who has gone docile and relaxed

Weighing the bird which was 3.6 grams!

Getting ready to feed the bird prior to release

Feeding the bird so it has energy to fly away and wakes back up

Placing the bird in another palm for release

This guy is ready to fly!!

And he is gone!

It was a slow day. All in all, they banded about 25 birds in a 5 hour stretch.  We had fun, ate stuff talked and photographed other birds!

For more information check out the hummingbird monitoring information here.

Bird Shots and more....

A recent acquaintance of ours told us her husband (the birder) and she (the photographer) are referred to as "Point and Shoot".  I thought that was pretty clever.  One time, at Bosque del Apache, Sraddha and I were photographing the cranes & talking with a bystander and I said "She spots them, I shoot them".  Another bystander, who overheard us, appeared to be mortified until they realized I meant shoot them with the camera.  Here are some photos I shot the past two days for your visual enjoyment.

Female Rufous Hummingbird

Anyway, I biked down to Portal Cafe in the wind to send you this blog.  Not much to say.  We felt lucky to find a spot 3 days ago as the campground is full, full, full.  Mostly returning happy campers who love this place and tend to stay for a while (limit 14 days).  Yesterday we thought our favorite spot would become available.

Maginficent Hummingbird

As we were preparing to move, we heard the current inhabitants had renewed for 4 more days.  They are 2 of our favorite people but I have to say I was a little disappointed.  Sraddha asked me whether I was and I shrugged it off thinking, "Oh well, maybe later in week".  Well that was a big hiccup! It wasn't until later, I realized how attached I was to that getting that spot.  The resultant internal kerfuffle resulted in my dropping my big camera on my new little camera and damaging it.  Yikes.  Now I have to send the 3 week old camera into repair shop and will be without it for several weeks.  Sigh.  Harsh lesson sometimes but I hope I am learning which is what life is all about.  Back to living in the moment, or at least focusing on it.

Black Chinned Hummingbird

We are meandering here in the Southwest, deciding each day whether we remain camped in our current site or move on.  We have a basic idea of the direction (SE New Mexico to Carlsbad) but won't take a straight line.  We don't know when we will depart here (sometime within the 14 day limit) and we think we will head next to Silver City less than 100 miles away.  In the meantime, we will enjoy where we are and if, tomorrow, we decide to move on, we will.  If we decide to remain, we will.  And work around the rest.  We will "develop a plan to fit the circumstances" as General Patton would say.

This last shot is of a Swainson's Hawk.  First one we have ever seen.  Flying high in the sky on the winds I was lucky to get this as it was far away so I had to crop it severely.  Beautiful bird but not a great shot.

Swainson't Hawk High up in air

Next Place - Patagonia, Arizona, a 78 mile drive

A few last photos from Buenos Aires, Arivaca and we are off to Patagonia, Arizona.

Our morning Walk north of Buenos Aires campsite.  Good driving road

We prefer to travel 100-150 or less miles in a day which means under 3 hours drive time, less gas used per day, and less wear and tear on everyone and everything.  We are meandering with no fixed agenda. We only have 3 fixed dates on rest of 2014 calendar so in between we can wander.

Our route from Arivaca to Patagonia

This trip is 78 miles according to the Google GPS on my iPhone and the photo above.  Our route takes us east through rolling hills to Amado and I-19, then south on i-19 to Nogales then NE back up highway 82 to Patagonia.  Before we depart, we go power walking 4 miles.

Our morning walk route north of Campsite in Buenos Aires NWR

We break camp, heading east to Arivaca for Saturday market where we purchase fresh eggs, a squash, and a chocolate chip cookie.  Then breakfast at an outdoor cafe.  Chile Rellenos.  Fresh grilled on mesquite open fire, then dipped in sauce.  Virginia, the owner seats us on a picnic bench while she prepares the food.  We were lucky as today she only had 12 chiles and we ate 4 of them.  Yum

Enjoying a Chile Relleno Breakfast in Arivaca

We drove the winding road over hill and dale.  Just as we turn to go onto the interstate I spot this bar and grill in Amado.  Have to take the shot.

An interesting entrance to a bar in Amado.  

The GPS wants us to turn off the interstate just north of Nogales.  Our benchmark map says this is a dirt road which we are not interested in taking so we choose an alternate route which takes through part of Nogales.  Hmm.  Nothing to shake a stick at, and one of the lanes was closed off due to a bike race so the speed was pretty slow.  Eventually we made it to highway 82 which took us east 16 miles to Patagonia.  There is no place around Patagonia to dry camp and we need to dump waste and replenish supplies so we headed to the local RV park which turned out to be a quiet little place off the beaten path.

Patagonia RV Park  Good WIFI

We signed up for 2 nights, set up camp and headed over to Paton's bird yard where I was able to get a couple decent photos of birds.

Paton's 

Lots of birds here and birders show up all the time as it is quite famous birding place with several seed feeders, oranges, hummingbird feeders.  The place used to be owned by someone named Paton who passed away.  Last year the Tucson Audobon society purchased the grounds in order to preserve the birding mecca.  Thousands of birders pass through here each season.  We stopped by last year.  Must see place.

Above is a low res photo of a Broad billed Hummingbird I photographed at Paton's.  It is slightly simplified.  I posted a much better one over on my flickr account if you want to see it but I don't want Google to have the better one. (Sometimes Google doesn't play well). 

That's all for now.  Stay tuned tomorrow.

Hummingbirds and Skyscrapers

Sunday evening after a full weekend.  Just completed a workshop this morning at Ananda Tucson covering "all things online with Ananda"  We began with the Ananda.org site, reviewed blogs and youtube and other of the main ananda websites, and concluded with watching last Sunday's video from Ananda Village.  Am always amazed and impressed with the depth of inspiration available online through these sites.

Lunch with Elizabeth and Stanley at a wonderful Indian restaurant then helped Elizabeth and their graphic designer get set up with the Ananda graphics package on their computers.  I use a Mac and they use Windows.  I marvel at how anyone can get things done on windows computers these days without some form of tech support.  We have excellent tech support and education at the village for all the employees, but someone on their own in the world has to find other resources.  Usually some family member perhaps. Anyway, I am grateful for our tech support department back home.

He is eying his  competitor (other Costas)

Costas Hummingbird

Yesterday Sraddha and I visited Tohono Chul park nearby which offered  wonderful examples of desert gardens and all kinds of flora and fauna, well, flora and birds anyway.  I am finding that patience pays off with bird photography when I found this one little Costas hummingbird flitting around one of the garden areas.

As I watched, he would sit on a shaded perch (not good for photos) then, every few minutes, dart out to plants around the garden to feed then back to his little shaded area.  I found a spot to sit on the ground near one of the plant clusters he frequented and waited with the sun at my back.  Finally he returned and I was able to get several photos of him as he worked over the blossoms.  Remember this little guy is only about 2 inches long and flies real fast! REAL FAST!

House front near Tucson Art Museum

Charro's - Great pumpkin tamales!

Cool reflection in downtown

After lunch in the outdoor cafe (keeping an eye out for my little freind), we ran a few errands then ended up looking for a place to photograph around sunset.  We tried San Xavier del Bac mission, but a festival was happening with loud music so we ventured back downtown finding an area near the art museum with colorful walls and interesting arrangements.

We also captured this cool reflection on a modern skyscraper.