February 20, 2011

Anna's Hummingbirds

We got a good day of banding in at Pine Gulch today, catching 18 birds, 9 new, 9 recaptures.

Six of the birds we caught were Anna's hummingbirds. The first three we caught were within 3 inches of each other in a net, two males and a female, which had clearly been chasing each other.

Here is an after second year male, with a full crown and gorget:
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The ASY male being weighed
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Here is what I think we decided was an unknown aged female, with some feathers in it's gorget and two pink crown feathers:
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Here is an after hatch year female, which had a limited number of pink gorget feathers, and no pink in it's crown:
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When processing birds we do a lot of blowing of air on their bodies and through their feathers to take a look at molt, brood patches, cloacal protuberances, fat, etc. Some birds have feathers everywhere, but interestingly hummingbirds do not (this is not a brood patch):
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Wrentit being weighed:
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Wrentit:
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A bushtit with lots of pollen around it's bill. The light iris color means it's a female:
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Michael caught in an awkward moment:
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The view from the banding spot at Pine Gulch, apparently it snowed at the top yesterday...
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