Hummingbirds!

Did you know that hummingbirds don't sing, so they communicate with each other through acrobatics? And every year they start their migration on the exact same day. Somehow they're able to know what day it is by the length of time the sun is in the sky. They fly hundreds of miles from Canada to Mexico, stopping at many of the same backyard bird feeders and flowering gardens. Isn't that remarkable?

We know all of this thanks to about 100 hummingbird banders in the country. They trap hummingbirds and put little aluminum bracelets on their legs with a unique number, so the next time a bander catches the bird, they can note its location, weight, length and so forth. It's intricate work, since hummingbirds are the size of a small plum and weigh little more than a dime. To keep the bird still while putting the band on, they put it into the toe of a woman's nylon and flip it over on its back.

Yesterday I met two of these banders at the botanical gardens here in Charlotte. It took me back to those summer mornings watching Grandma carefully mix sugar water for the hummingbird feeder on her SoCal patio. Those bright-red plastic flowers on the feeder seemed to gaudy to me, but apparently hummingbirds can see red from 3/4 of a mile away. And I was quite the skeptic when Grandma claimed she would see her same hummingbird friends come back each summer. Yesterday I learned that she was totally right!

Here's a cool video of the bander releasing one of the hummingbirds. First she sets it on the little girl's palm. Several of them actually sat still on the child's palm for a few seconds before flying off. This one was anxious for freedom.