Day Moon
We tend to think of migration as a nightly event as we enter the spring – watching birds pass in front of the moon on a clear evening, catching them on radar, hearing flight calls in the darkness or finding new faces have joined us in our yards and patches when we wake up in the morning. While we often ignore the moon shining in the bright blue sky all day we also ignore the fact many birds are flying over us then, too. Yes, we see geese and certainly are aware of hawk watches and the many raptors that use thermals, but shorebirds might be migrating nonstop over the continent, while...
Read MoreLong-billed Starthroat
Here is a great close-up of the Long-billed Starthroat (Heliomaster longirostris) by RTPI Affiliate Sean Graesser on the last day of hummingbird research on the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. More information on some great finds and recaptures will be coming soon. Our thanks to him and his colleagues for their tremendous work and gorgeous photos like this one.
Read MoreRufous Hummingbird and vagrancy
This past weekend I was able to briefly visit and photograph a vagrant hummingbird from the west at an undisclosed location in Connecticut. I was told of the sighting by two experts who had documented the bird a couple hours earlier, confirming via observations and photos that this was a Rufous Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus), and not the very easy to confuse Allen’s Hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin) which would have been even more rare. The bird pictured below is an immature female. She paused only briefly in the tree being otherwise occupied and somewhat anxious, zipping back and...
Read MoreHummingbird banding begins
On December 3 we started hummingbird banding and research at Finca Pura Vida. To say these magnificent birds overwhelmed us is an understatement. We have been having feeders filled for us while we were away from our research station so that when we got here the birds would already be accustomed to the food source. We set our traps last night and filled all of our feeders to the brim to start early. On average over 50 individuals were feeding at one time and we had most likely over 300 individuals feeding in the time period we were working. We constantly had to close traps and nets to catch...
Read MoreScaly-breasted Hummingbird (Phaeochroa cuvierii) by Sean Graesser
We arrived in Costa Rica yesterday and got right to work today. We woke up this morning to our hummingbird feeders being visited by over 200 individuals. We have set all of our traps and research begins tomorrow. This Scaly-breasted Hummingbird (Phaeochroa cuvierii) got caught when we were setting up today. We have already observed two out of range species at the feeders.
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