Over my 19 lucky years of banding with young kids one common feature that seems to apply to most groups of kids is that they want to name the birds we band . Whether this be a taxonomic attempt like calling a black and white warbler the referee warbler or the salt and pepper warbler or just having fun and naming a hummingbird being banded "Aunt Kathy". Oh we have had many more names that kids come up such as "astro physics", "maple leafs want to win the cup" ( I had nothing to do with the naming of that blue jay) and perhaps the worst name in history was "strawberry puke". The birds that day all had to have a colour name and well the kids had a vivid memory of too many berries, so shame on parents that were thinking of too many blender drinks. Whenever we have these avian authors come up with names of birds and to show how recording data is so crucial we have them write their ideas down in the comment section of our banding sheets. So the stage is set for something very exciting about Aunt Kathy and Aunt Becky so why not get dramatic..
Ask any student at Kerns public what my favourite word is and they will easily tell you that it is serendipity ask the kids if I can spell it right and they will tell you "if I am lucky!" Serendipity based on the readers digest word power quiz I read at the dentist means "by chance or happy circumstance" and that is what banding is all about . "Putting a band on a bird," Aldo Leopold a famous conservationist wrote, "gives us a ticket in the greatest lottery of all time". And that is why we band birds.
For those of you who know me I talk a lot so it will come as a shock that I really do not like doing radio interviews. Joanne and I went to Sudbury to sit in the studio of CBC radio with Barry Mercer and I endured 5 minutes of sweat and mumbled enough coherent words together about hummingbird banding that Mary Demarce gave me a call to invite us to their wonderful cottage on Wendigo lake . In a summer and spring of nestling failures across the east they had a lot of hummingbirds coming to their 6 feeders. I taught with Cam years ago and when the two of them assured us they had lots of birds we packed up and headed to Wendigo.
We arrived after a brief ferry ride on pontoon boat and as soon as we were on shore we heard hummingbirds and knew we were at the right place. We set up out two hummingbird traps and with a few adjustments starting banding hummingbirds. As we trapped birds Cam and Mary's grandkids took birds down by the shore to where Joanne banded them. Before each bird was released, the kids named each and every bird with equal enthusiasm with the hope that they would thrive and return one day. Before we knew it we had banded 27 birds which was our record for northern Ontario and we promised to come back the following summer. The real gift a host garden gives us is the chance to band on their property for years so we can possibly track the birds.
Fast forward to August 21st 2014.......
As chance would have it Cam and Mary had us back to their cottage and we managed to outdo our previous total by 1 bird making our new record at 28 but we managed to retrap 2 birds from last year. The kids had two aunts that were at the cottage to see the birds being banded and each aunt had a bird that was named after them the previous year. One was "Aunt Becky" and the other was "Aunt Kathy" The neatest part was that we re-trapped "aunt Kathy" seconds after the real Aunt Kathy arrived at the cottage.
Whenever a bird returns it is cause for celebration but when it is a hummingbird it is cause for even greater joy. Bob Sargeant the man who trained us to band hummingbirds told us that he had no idea what we should expect banding in the north. We know that about 80% of migrating hatching year birds do not survive the migration. Becky and Kathy were originally banded as adult females and they made it back to the exact same location and were re-trapped within 2 days of their original banding. Folks always tell us that their hummingbirds arrive in the spring and hover where the feeder should be. Bob Sargeant insists that this anecdotal evidence can be misleading but Cam and Mary allowing us to band at their place helps us secure a link. Their location is going to be a great way to track the movement of hummingbirds and to see potentially how long they will come back for. The oldest banded hummingbird encounter was 9 years and 3 months after it was banded. I wish I had the chance to band Cam when he was a hatching year bird. Maybe we can convince the kids to call one of their birds Cam or Mary. As for Becky and Kathy what they have done is incredible. They have both crossed the Gulf of Mexico at least four times; once on the way south as hatching year birds. So they beat the odds and are in the 20% of survivors. Then they came back as young adults and potentially had babies then they they made it back across the gulf on their second journey south then they made it back again. Where they went after crossing the gulf we can only guess at. The only thing we know for sure is that they were banded as adults and somehow made it back to the exact same spot where they were banded a year ago.
Many of you tell me how you marvel when you see a hummingbird sitting motionless on a branch contemplating their next move in the garden. Should they go to the feeder maybe snatch an aphid or alight in their favourite red flower maybe a bee balm or Holley-hock. The human Aunt Kathy came to the island after a phone call with a couple of liters of milk what call will send the hummingbird Aunt Kathy across the gulf yet again and more importantly what call will bring her back to Wendigo and will we get to see her again? The only answer I can suggest is 'yes' with a little luck. And this is why we band.
