Hummmm

The other weekend we got to see something and touch something that most people never get the chance to do. Southern Arizona is a huge highway for hummingbirds to migrate through. Our local bird observatory does hummingbird banding during the spring and late summer when the birds are migrating north and south. The have it open to the public so people can observe how they capture and tag them. It is really fascinating!

First they drop a netting over them using a remote control as they take a drink. Then they carefully catch them and put them into small netted cages.

Then we are able to carry them over to where they will be weighed, measured, checked over, and tagged.

It's quite a process and the lady doing it was very informative and explained everything she was doing.

After checking them over, they allowed us to help release them! They were put into our hands where they remained until flying off. Poor Christian's bird only gave him about two seconds before peeing on him and bidding him farewell! Alena's bird sat for a minute and then the lady asked if Christian would like to try again. Apparently, Christian is not the bird whisperer because that bird flew off within a few seconds too!

Gabe's bird loved him and sat there forever. The lady was nice enough to let Christian have a third turn at getting a bird to stay in his hand. Again, no such luck!

One of the neatest things was the finding of part of an eggshell stuck on a fresh out of the nest bird! The lady gave it to Alena to show around. Alena felt very important because she was the only person to touch a hummingbird eggshell.

Kind of blurry but it's the tiny white speck.

Here's a look at our hummingbird experience last year.