This weekend was certainly interesting. The students in the ENS class, their teacher, her TAs, and I headed into the mountains for the night and a day of hummingbird observation and tagging. We stayed at basically a truck stop on the crest of a large mountain, whose valleys and tops were washed with clouds. Only on Sunday morning were we able to get a glimpse of what was above and below the parts we could see.
We had been warned that this place was cold, so I was relieved to see that I had an electric blanket on my bed--but it didn't work. We had all brought the warmest clothes we could find because we had been warned by previous classes, but it was like camping in the NC mountains in the fall--very chilly and brisk in the morning--but with no fire to chase the chills away.
On the way up Saturday we hiked to a mountain bog--lots of fun squishing through mud and bog in our attractive black rubber boots. At the way station the students started observing the kinds of hummingbirds and the frequency they fed at the feeders hung all over the outside of the dining room. They were researching whether the feeders interrupted natural feeding patterns on the many flowers scattered on the property. One small bird, the volcano, never came to the feeders, which was interesting.
On Sunday, we set up some nets to trap the birds (no animals were injured during this experiment!). The teaching assistants took care of that part, then handed them over to us to hold and take to the "tagging" station--which was really a manicure station set up to place a drop of bright nail polish on their little feet to let us know if they were repeaters (and therefore not eligible), gently take pollen off their beaks with tape, and record their species. I learned that although hummingbirds may look the same from a distance, they are really very different in temperament, beak size and curve, size, and color. It was amazing to be this close to these little creatures and hear dozens of them bussing around at once. Students took turns doing this while others compared pollen gathered from the flowers to the pollen collected from the birds
On the way home, the students climbed up a steep rocky hill to study another high mountain habitat, but I stayed in the bus to rest my foot, enjoy the driver's choice of music, and take in some of the scenery.
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