April 4, 2009

Saturday 4~~~~Today is the day we get to watch the banding of the hummingbirds. We stopped in the town of Bisbee, Arizona on our way to Benson. It is a quaint little mining town with very old, colorful houses built on the most narrow streets on the steepest hills. The mine was a copper pit mine that employed most of the town until ????. (pictures) The shops are very small and are full of antiques and lots of neat stuff!!!!! We want to go to the town later in the week when we can stay longer. Next we went to a neat trailer park that was full of old travel trailers restored and refurnished with bedding and articles of the year of the trailer. There was one that was "Luci's Long Trailer". (picture) They rent these out to people who want to share in the experience of that period for a night or what ever you want. They were real cute, but small. From here we went to Benson, Arizona where they band the hummingbirds every year when they return from their winter voyage. These birds fly as far as 5000 miles to Mexico or Canada depending on what state they live in and they return to the same place at almost the exact same day each season. They band them to learn about them for their studies. They have a hummingbird feeder with a large net that is remote controlled to drop over the feeder when one a bird is in there feeding. They remove the bird and they put it in a small net cage and reset the big net to catch another one. They let us carry them to the ladies that weigh, measure (tail feathers, bill, ) check their feathers by blowing on them through a straw to see if they have any eggs, fat or many things they are trained to look for. (pictures) Two other ladies register all of this and they keep a file on each bird. If you want to adopt one, you pay $25 and you pick its name and they take your picture of you and your bird and you get to release your bird when all of its stats are complete. It is a lot of fun when banded birds return and they look up their card and tell us when it was first banded and how many times it has returned and then they redo all the measurements and such again. Four years ago a couple adopted two birds, one for each of them, their male bird has returned every year, but the female has never returned. It was so exciting when she returned this year when we were there and she had two eggs in her. They blow their feathers through a straw and they could see the eggs through the skin. I had a lot of fun realeasing the birds that weren't adopted and carrying then from the catcher to the record keepers. You can feel their heartbeat so strong when you hold one waiting for it to fly away. (pictures) They give them a good drink before we release, so calm them down. (picture)