I do most of my winter banding in St. Tammany Parish, with a handful of hummers banded in Tangipahoa and East Baton Rouge Parishes. This season I visited thirty St. Tammany yards, a few more than once. Captures totaled 99 individuals from seven species! New bands went on 81 hummers, and a whopping 18 were returnees from previous years’ bandings.
The season started slowly but picked up after the first of the year. However, I shared disappointment with many folks who have hosted a hummer or two in past years but did not get a visitor this season.
Here are some highlights.
(Note that each ‘season’ spans the period from the fall of one year to the spring the next year.)
Fourth-winter Returnees
An adult female Calliope banded 12.12.00 in the Mehaffeys’ Folsom yard returned the following season (01-02) but failed to show
up in the 2002-03 season. When Mary reported a female Calliope in her yard this season, we were stunned to find it was the same
bird I banded in 2000. Where was she last year? Since this bird was banded as an adult we really don’t know what year she hatched.
Minimally, it was 1999, so this female Calliope is more than five years old.
In early January 2001, I banded an immature Rufous at the Roussels’ in Baton Rouge, and he has become a regular winter resident. We’ve dubbed this fellow “3K” for his band number Y03000. He has faithfully returned each year to the Roussels’ yard during the third week in August and defends a territory until early March. This bird holds a special place in our hearts. He was the Roussels’ first winter hummingbird and the only winter hummingbird they had that first season. Since then, they have built a hummer haven and the number of winter hummers increases each year.
A more elusive visitor is a male Ruby-throated that spent his first winter in the Covington Country Club area. He was immature when I banded him in the Pattens’ yard on 12.14.00. He wasn’t seen very often at the feeders; a few aggressive Rufous probably kept him at bay. He survived to return the following year, but, being a roving bird, I failed to catch him that season. I did manage to capture him to confirm his band number both last season and this one just ending.
Eighth-winter Returnee
The Cliftons’ pocket garden has provided a home for “Old Mama”, a female Rufous, every winter since Nancy Newfield
banded her in January 1997. Fortunately, we have captured Old Mama almost every season, so her return could be verified.
However, this grande dame is getting harder to catch each season. Without Dave Patton’s involvement, Old Mama would have
been overlooked. (Check out his story at
http://www.cox-internet.com/hummer/Mama.htm.)
Old Mama may be the oldest known Rufous at this time. Since she was an adult when banded, the latest year she could have
hatched is 1995, making her nearly nine years old!
Foreign Recaptures
Fred Bassett caught a female Rufous in Mobile, AL in January 2004. She was wearing a band I placed on her in the
Greders’ Covington yard in March 2003.
Another errant female Rufous is one that I banded in the Bordelons’ Covington yard, also in March 2003. Nancy Newfield caught her in Boothville, LA in February 2004.
Isn’t it interesting that both of these immature birds were banded late in the season but were recaptured the following year in locations far from the original banding site? Were they traveling from somewhere else, and I just happened to catch them while they were passing through Covington?
While not as great in both time and distance as the previous captures, an adult male Ruby-throated I banded in late November at the Dodds’ Covington Country Club home surprised us when he turned up five miles away at the Owens’ Tchefuncta Estates home in mid-February. When I banded this fellow, he was carrying some fat so I assumed he was a late migrant. Obviously I was wrong.
Fickle Returnees
Although most returnees come back to the same yard where they were banded, a few wind up spending the winter in another
yard not too far away from the original site. Here are some examples:
In addition to the one mentioned above, the Bordelons had another bird return but not to their yard. This immature female Rufous was banded in November 2002 and wound up spending this winter in Abita Springs at the Cliftons’.
And coincidently, another female Rufous I banded at the Greders’ in February 2002 returned to the area both this season and last. However, she did not go back to the Greders’ yard but showed up both years in the Selbys’ Mandeville garden.
The Roussels had the reverse happen in their yard. A female Rufous Nancy banded at another Baton Rouge home returned the past two seasons and wintered with the Roussels.
Here’s a breakdown of the individuals I handled this 2003-04 season:
Species
Banded
Returnees
Total Buff-bellied Hummingbird 1 2 3 Ruby-throated Hummingbird 3 1 4 Black-chinned Hummingbird 3 3 Calliope Hummingbird 5 2 7 Broad-tailed Hummingbird 1 1 Rufous Hummingbird 66 13 79 Allen’s Hummingbird 2 2 Total 81 18 99
You can read Nancy Newfield’s reports of the Louisiana Winter Hummingbird Project on LOS’s web page http://losbird.org/index.htm. Her report defines the project and shows the results of all hummingbird banders in Louisiana.