Idaho City Hummingbird Banding

[Birds Chirping] [Music]

Jessica Pollock, Research Biologist, Intermountain Bird Observatory: We are in Idaho City and we are at our research station banding hummingbirds this is our eighth season banding here, and we have captured and banded probably close to 3,000 hummingbirds so far. We like to open up our hummingbird banding to the public, because we think it’s really important for the public to be part of it and to get that exposure to nature but also that connection to nature. What we do here is it’s a it’s a research station it’s a banding operation so, the process is we have two traps set up and we capture the birds and then the birds are brought to the banding table, each bird receives a unique band so a unique number on that band which is equivalent to a social security number of a person and so if that band is recaptured or that bird is recaptured anywhere we can tie it right back to here we’ll know it was from Idaho City when it was banded how old it was banded. We do other morphometric features so we weigh them, we check for fat because fat is a sign of Health, and it’s the fuel that Birds used for migration for nesting, we check the condition of their feathers, we age them, we sex them, we use the data to monitor long-term population trends, we learn about migratory timing, migratory routes, we learn about productivity how many babies are they having and how are their populations doing over time, how are birds surviving over time are there populations going up or down so there’s a lot of data that we can use and to answer questions like that you typically need several years of data to be able to accurately answer those questions and with eight years of data we’re starting to get to that place where we can start to do the analyses and every subsequent year that we do this the more data we’re going to build we’re going to be able to accurately answer those questions. When family groups and kids come here one of the most exciting things that they do is getting the chance to feel a hummingbird in their hand, so I like to go around to everybody and get them to feel the hummingbird heartbeat so if you place the bird on their hand you can feel that really quick vibration and everybody gets to feel what a hummingbird heartbeat feels like, and then the other thing is getting to release the bird back into the wild so putting it on your hand and getting the blow and watching that bird fly back into nature is one of the most special experiences that you’ll probably ever have with birds and you’ll remember that for the rest of your life so we try to encourage that as often as we can and get the public to join us as frequently as possible.

[Music]