Banders: Brent & Sue Ortego, and Bron Rorex
This is our 3rd trip of our 5th season banding hummingbirds in the Texas Hill Country. We make 4 monthly trips during each breeding season. We caught hummingbirds and songbirds for 4 hours at each of 3 ranches during the weekend 7-8 June 2008
Winds ranging from 15-25 mph all weekend made capturing hummingbirds and songbirds very difficult. Capture rates of hummingbirds were very low this trip as compared to past years, and likely much of this was due to the weather. However, not all differences to past years can be explained by the weather.
We did not recapture enough birds from previous trips to be able to make reasonable estimates of the population this month.
46% of adult females showed evidence of having nested while 75% did in 2007 and 85% in 2006.
Ranch fed 3.86 gallons per day the week prior to banding in June.
55% of the adult females showed evidence of having nested while 90% did in 2007 and 74% in 2006.
Ranch fed 1.75 gallons per day the week before banding in June.
Wiedenfeld Ranch, Comfort
Caught 102 in June 2006, 310 in June 2007, and 332 in May 2008. We caught 44 Black-chins on this trip: 5 adult and 10 immature males, and 25 adult and 4 immature females. We had 32% of the hummingbirds as young with only 3% young in 2007. Males represented only 17% of the adults as compared to 44% in 2007 and 35% in 2006.
64% of the adult females showed evidence of having nested while 64% did in 2007 and 92% did in 2006.
Ranch fed 1.88 gallons per day the week before June banding.
Summary:
With low catches caused by the weather, we can only guess as to what is happening and likely will have to wait until our last banding session at the end of June to make any conclusions on production in 2008.
Evidence of nesting females were considerably lower than past years, but percent young higher than normal. Adult males appeared to already be leaving for the year. We did notice a few adult males and one adult females already going through body molt indicating the breeding season for these birds was done and they were getting ready for migration. Some individual hummingbirds molt before migrating south while others will wait until they get to the winter grounds.
We spent more time catching songbirds this trip because of low numbers of hummers being brought to the banding tables.
We banded 23 songbirds at the Wiedenfeld Ranch and 121 at the Matter Ranch. Young birds made up a high percentage of the catch indicating nesting was going well for them.
Of particular interest were the 23 Purple Martins we banded at the Matter Ranch. These birds were individually banded with color bands that are readable with spotting scopes. This allows us to identify the birds without having to capture them again and should make it easier for us to learn more about the martins. This martin banding is part of a larger study sponsored by the Purple Martin Conservation Association where attempts are made to band 2,000 Purple Martins per year in Texas with the same protocol.
We spent a good part of Sunday morning watching the young martins in the picture above that left the nest early being fed by the parents.
There is obviously much more to these trips than just the banding. We are participating with some very wildlife conscious landowners that treat their guests very well with their time, food and facilities.
| SPECIES | BURDITT | MATTER | WIEDENFELD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hummer Adult male | 32 | 21 | 5 |
| Hummer Young male | 45 | 8 | 10 |
| Hummer Adult female | 59 | 22 | 25 |
| Hummer Young female | 26 | 1 | 4 |
| Golden-fronted Woodpecker | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Ladder-backed Woodpecker | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| Purple Martin | 0 | 23 | 0 |
| Black-crested Titmouse | 0 | 7 | 0 |
| Rufous-crowned Sparrow | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Chipping Sparrow | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Field Sparrow | 0 | 13 | 4 |
| Lark Sparrow | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Northern Cardinal | 0 | 20 | 10 |
| Painted Bunting | 0 | 13 | 7 |
| House Finch | 0 | 32 | 0 |
| Lesser Goldfinch | 0 | 2 | 0 |