Hummingbird Banding: All You Need to Know

I witnessed an hour's worth of hummingbird bandings, when hummingbirds fly into a cage they can't figure their way out of, then are grasped and put in a net bag, then measured, placed in a tiny fabric bag, weighed, and are gently given leg bands the width of a pinhead, stamped with a four-digit numeral -- if they haven't one already, because since the 1990s volunteer and federally certified bander Lanny Chambers of Missouri by his own count has banded 6,000 hummingbirds -- and 30 more today.

Lanny and wife Linda travel to state parks in the summer and invite the public to watch and learn. After banding and measuring each bird, giving the figures to Linda who wrote them down, he stepped out into the open and let a spectator hold the hummingbird, urging us to feel its astonishing heartbeat (20 beats per second), until the bird up and flew, btw always leaving a pool of pee in the spectator's hand.

Chambers and his wife answered every question I had, and after 18 summers with Divine Cabin hummingbirds I had plenty.

Q: Why are you banding them?
A: For a federal science database with bird migration information.
Q: What information are you taking?
A: Their gender, age, length and weight, and the number on the band they are assigned. If they have a band already, we take a note of that and add it to the bird's history. Banding is the only way we can learn more about them.
Q: Why do you look at the beak with a magnifier?
A:  To tell their age. Juveniles will have little marks along the beak, sort of like growth rings or stretch marks. Adults don't have those.
Q: What's your background? How did you learn to do this? Is this your life work?
A: I majored in anthropology. I had only one job in that field for one summer. Now that I'm retired, this is my science hobby. It's my way of contributing to science. And some kid might see what I'm doing and get interested in biology. So many kids these days don't know nature.
Q: How were you trained for this?
A: I took an expensive course and then was certified.
Q: Are you paid to do this, or are you a volunteer?
A: I'm not paid for this.
Q: What interests you specifically in hummingbirds?
A: It's not at all because they're little and cute. I'm joking.
Q: What's the best hummingbird feeder formula?
A: Four parts water to one part cane sugar. They'll take beet sugar but prefer cane.
Q: Why are hummingbirds attracted to the color red?
A: They're attracted to any bright color, because those are the colors of flowers, and flowers are food.
Q: Why are hummingbirds so combative with each other?
A: They're defending their food supply.
Q: It's the same birds every year at my feeder?
A: They always come back to where they were born. They remember every single feeder in their territory and on their migration paths, just as you remember the whereabouts of every grocery store around you.
Q: Where do they winter?
A: In Central America.
Q: What do they do there all winter?
A: Exactly what they do here.
Q: Do they fly or travel in packs or families?
A: No, they're loners. They fly across the Gulf of Mexico alone. They can fly for up to 25 hours straight.
Q: How old is the oldest hummingbird in your banding program?
A: It survived for 10 years. Three or four years is the average lifespan.
Q: Do hummingbirds sleep?
A: Yes. They perch on a branch and sleep. They can't do anything in the dark.
Q: I heard that the female hummingbirds do all the parenting.
A: All hummingbird mothers are single mothers. Juveniles of both genders look like females. The female builds the nest with spider webbing and other expandable materials so the nest will expand as the babies grow. Hummingbirds will pick and eat from a spider web all the insects caught in the web, then eat the spider too, then take the webbing for nest building.
Q: What does the mother feed the babies before they can fly?
A: She regurgitates a slurry of insects and nectar. She feeds them insects for protein.
Q: Why is the male's throat red?
A: The feathers there are black except for a micro-coating that makes them look red or orange from certain angles. The male flashes his red when he wants to look threatening.
Q: What is a hummingbird doing when it points its beak straight up in the air and holds it there?
A: It's napping. Some nap that way and some don't. Every bird is different.
Q: Why do they pee so much? They peed on the hand of everybody who held one.
A: Because they ingest so much nectar. Their body burns the calories and they eject the excess water before they take flight. Just getting rid of water weight. Here's some hand sanitizer.

Do you want to experience a hummingbird banding? Here is a link. Lanny and Linda have been doing this work for years at various state parks. I had fun, and yes, I got to hold a hummingbird in my palm, throbbing like a little engine, for a few seconds before it up and flew.

Don Robinson State Park: First Look

Click on the above photo to see the full horizontal view

Don Robinson, childless bachelor, made a fortune with spot remover and ended up owning 818 acres in northern Jefferson County, MO that before his death in 2012 he gave to the State of Missouri for a new state park that opened at last on January 6, 2017. One of its two hiking loops is 2.4 miles, partly paved, and the other more than 4 miles; the latter isn't open yet. His unusual, hand-built hilltop house (part stone cottage that was already there, part particle board, old boards, old glass, or anything he could recycle) is preserved for a future Don Robinson museum.

Raw-looking orange and red sandstone cuts are the first thing you'll see as you enter from the Byrnesville Road. A steep short asphalt loop leads to Robinson's house, with an Ozark foothills view as far as you can see. A huge concrete terrace was poured to its south and furnished with a shelter, picnic tables, and rocking chairs. It'll be a spectacular view in every season. Some old stone stairs have been preserved, along with the old bench in the photo, the only ornate thing there. Robinson's grave (he was born in 1927) is not far from the house and on a new bench nearby you can sit and say a long thanks that his land did not become a subdivision.

Originally it was said there'd be a campground but there isn't. The property abuts some of the LaBarque Creek-area conservation sites and natural areas. Special features include lots of chinkapin oaks and birds, and hardly any cedars (unlike the formerly cedar-choked Glassberg Conservation Area). Eight hundred eighteen more acres for the people of Missouri and guests. Most of the land is accessible only on foot. I was there late in the day and caught a few rays of sunshine, scarce these last two weeks in January. The land will be fun to explore.

Washington State Park

Can you see The Mighty Thunderbird?

Washington State Park in Missouri, south of DeSoto, has petroglyphs but I couldn't find them along the Thousand Steps Trail, a "moderately difficult" (aggh!) trail not a thousand steps in length but with a thousand steep stone steps, wet and slippery. The restrooms were locked. A syringe lay on the picnic table. The grills in the picnic areas are stenciled "Washington State Park" to discourage theft. I thought, This park is so bogus.

The petroglyphs near the Park entrance were carved by Mississippian Indians a thousand years ago, so you can look until you're cross-eyed but they aren't visible. The park maps are xeroxed and impossible to read. I drove farther and saw the second petroglyph area, protected by a walkway and roof. And began to change my mind. There carved in stone were The Mighty Thunderbird and his smaller birds who carry lightning bolts to earth, and shapes and symbols (no one knows what they mean). Cool. . .things were getting interesting.

All buildings in the park are historic, built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. They're exceptional. The park's Thunderbird Lodge sells "hand-dipped ice cream." Tackled another trail, the Opossum Track trail, 2.5 miles and "moderately difficult" but more fun, maybe because I had Blue Bunny ice cream, and along the path I saw the day's most extraordinary sight: a huge lime-green Luna moth (Actius luna), about four and a half inches across. They don't have mouths and don't eat. They live to mate. They're common but rarely seen because they live for only seven days in June and are sensitive to urban light pollution.

Troubled Bridge On Old Route 66

Once part of the famous Route 66, this 1009-foot-long bridge was built in 1931 and closed in 2009, and to discourage illicit foot and bike traffic and keep the rusty thing from collapsing under its own weight, the paving was removed and this is what you now see from the landed portion of Missouri's Route 66 State Park, a tract of about 400 acres. In the distance with the red roofing is a famous roadhouse built in 1935, known as "Old Bridgehead Inn" or "Steiny's," depending on the era and whom you ask. It's now Route 66 State Park's visitor center and museum (closed November through February; it's just as well, since there's no dancing or beer).

I walked this bridge, spanning the Meramec River, back when it was still paved and linked the two segments of the park the river now separates. This photo was taken on State Park land that was formerly Times Beach, a working-class/poor-people townlet with four bars and four churches, 801 families, a mayor, and 23 miles of dirt roads. To keep the dust down, during the '60s and '70s they hired a guy to repeatedly spray used crankcase oil on the roads, but he'd mixed it with toxic waste: dioxin, used to manufacture the poison Agent Orange. Times Beach was so saturated with dioxin with that the EPA ordered the whole town evacuated in 1983, buying out the residents. The EPA then dug up 240,000 tons of contaminated soil, built an incinerator and incinerated it on the spot (finishing in 1998), and buried what was left of people's houses, and now it's land called Route 66 State Park where there's no camping and nothing to see but this end of the bridge, and nobody lingers or picnics. Nobody who knows the story, anyway. A bike ride or run or hike around its edge (3.25 miles) is enough.

But once this was a happenin' town with grocery and gas station, the bridge an infamous speed trap allowing Times Beach to support itself. I have a friend born in Times Beach in 1971. I mean really born there, not in a hospital. She's blind in one eye and has chronic kidney problems. The bridge's skeleton stays while the state hopes someone will fund its restoration.