State College Bird Club
September 27, 2017
State College Bird Club Meeting, September 27, 2017
Presiding: Doug Wentzel
Recording: Debra Grim
Attendees: 40
Business
Checklist: 158 species reported since September 1, including American
Golden Plover, Barn Owl, Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, Marsh Wren,
Orange-crowned Warbler, Connecticut Warbler, and Clay-colored Sparrow.
Treasurer report (Jean Miller): $2,338 in checking, $19,563 in savings.
Field trips: Scotia Barrens, September 30 at 7:30 am. Waggoner’s Gap Hawk Watch with Juniata Valley Audubon, October 21.
Laura Jackson has bird-friendly coffee for sale, grown by Honduran coffee farmer Emilio Garcia.
President Doug Wentzel addressed the direction of the Club for the
coming year. He would like to be able to record and report the number
of hours of volunteer activity (bird counts, eBird data entry, etc.)
performed by members. He challenged us to increase the number of
species reported in eBird for Spring Creek Park, which stands at 60,
compared to 127 in Sunset Park.
Shaver’s Creek will re-open in the spring. A volunteer is needed who will commit to one half day per week in the raptor center.
Millbrook Marsh will have a “Beer and Gear” Big Sit on October 8.
Presentation
September Speaker: Sandy Lockerman: Hummingbirds: Flying Jewels and Flower Kissers
Sandy, who suggests that her hummingbird obsession approaches the “fine
line between a hobby and a mental illness,” explained the adaptations
of hummingbirds—color, flight, tongue, and torpor.
Rather than pigments deposited in feathers during their development,
much of the showy color in hummers is structural, depending on the
angle at which light is reflected from mirror-like platelets coating
feather surfaces. Brightly colored gorgets and helmets help the birds
recognize each other as competitors or potential mates.
Hummingbirds can hover and fly up, down, and backwards. One quarter of
the bird’s weight consists of pectoral muscles that power stiff wings
that move in a horizontal figure eight at 50-75 beats per minute,
giving the bird a forward speed of 25-40 mph.
The hummingbird tongue, often compared to a straw, is much more
complex. It is deeply forked and fringed, to lap up nectar 15-20 times
per second.
These tiny birds have a huge energy output and they have no downy
insulation. To lower their energy needs at night, they can go into
torpor, in which body temperature drops and heartbeat slows.
Hummingbirds are unique to the Western Hemisphere. They have enriched
Native American mythology, believed to hitch rides on the backs of
goose or cranes, appearing as gods in some cultures, and portrayed by
Nazca Lines in Peru. They ranged in size from the tiny Bee Hummingbird
in Cuba to the Giant Hummingbird in the Andes. Fifteen species breed in
the United States.
Females tend to be larger than the males, display little or no
iridescence, and raise their chicks alone while defending their own
feeding territories. Males guard a territory and seek to mate with as
many females as possible and do all this so aggressively that they only
live a couple years, compared to 3-4 years for females. One female
known to live a record nine years may have remained in the southern US
rather than migrate.
Banding hummingbirds requires a special permit. There are only about
five banders in Pennsylvania. The tiny aluminum bands are hand-made and
hard to acquire, but the chances of recovering banded birds is very
low, so not much is known about their migration routes, but these tiny
birds often fly right across the Gulf of Mexico in spring. Sightings
are reported and mapped on the hummingbirds.net website as the birds
re-enter the U.S.
Ruby-throated Hummingbirds almost entirely leave the U.S. each fall,
the males going first and the juveniles last. Other species will show
up in Pennsylvania during migration and some stay the winter. They
subsist on conifer sap, insects, and sugar water in feeders.
Feeders should be stocked with a 1:4 ratio of sugar to water. Flowers
like coral bells, penstemons, salvia, monardas, trumpet honeysuckle,
and jewelweed attract them. Bees and wasps can be lured away from
feeders by a tray containing a cloth soaked in a 2:1 ratio of sugar to
water.
Minutes by Debra Grim