Carolyn Heitzman, age 11, of Des Moines, Iowa, for her question:
Where do hummingbirds go for the winter?
An Anna hummingbird named Hank stays in Andy's garden because in his species it is customary to spend the winter in Southern California. As a matter of fact, the gaily dressed midget is a permanent resident. Not so the 16 other hummers that visit North America for the summer season. They departed in late fall to find milder winters south of the border.
Tracing the migratory paths of ducks, geese and other sizable birds is not easy. But with patience and help from numerous bird lovers from far and wide, it can be done. The most successful method is to catch a few birds from a flock and band their legs with painless indentification tags. When found far afield, the tags are returned to the bird station, along with data on when and where.
But just imagine trying to tag a high spirited midget, such as the average hummingbird. The peppy little character resists capture with all his might. His legs, apart from his scrappy claws, are small and fragile. There seems to be no other small part onto which an identification can be tagged. Besides, who would remove and return it?
There is another reason why the usual bird tracking methods would be likely to fail. Ducks and most other birds migrate in flocks and one or two tags are enough to keep track of large groups. The spunky little hummer is a loner. Only he knows where he is headed and his winter resort may be near a forgotten village high in the Andes.
Obviously the only people who can keep track of his winter whereabouts are naturalists who happen to be on the spot when he arrives and departs. Through the years, a number of these reliable observations have been gathered. They pinpoint certain locations in Mexico and give sketchy reports on hummingbird winter resorts farther south in Central and South America.
Our most common summer visitors are the little rufus hummer, who favors the West, and the bejeweled ruby throated hummer who prefers to raise his midget family eastward from the Mississippi Valley. We have a pretty good idea where these favorites go. They migrate to various parts of Mexico. And, of all things, each small traveler flies solo on a non stop journey of 500 miles across the Gulf of Mexico.
It is thought that a few may take a detour and stop off in Cuba, perhaps to pause a few days or spend the whole winter. Reports of winter resorts favored by other species in Central and South America most likely are true. But the exact locations are hard to verify.
A hummingbird is a miniature package of dynamic energy to whom no feat of strength and endurance seems impossible. If he were man sized, he would have to consume 285 pounds of food every day. The metabolism that governs his body process works so fast that this man sized hummer would have to ooze 100 pounds of perspiration daily, just to keep his skin temperature below the boiling point of water. Hence, it is no surprise that the rufus migrates over ice capped mountains as high as 12,000 feet. No doubt these small wonders perform other astounding migratory feats.