Hello everyone! We had a very exciting hummingbird monitoring session yesterday. We banded 12 new hummingbirds, including our very first Anna's Hummingbird and our very first recapture of a bird not banded here on Grouse Mountain.
Anna's Hummingbirds are found in the Vancouver area, but are normally located at lower elevations near the coast.
The recaptured Rufous Hummingbird was banded four years ago at the base of nearby Fromme Mountain. She has survived all these years, and multiple visits to Mexico for the winter and is now back on Grouse Mountain and when we examined her she had a nearly fully developed egg in her abdomen. It's exciting to see she chose here to breed!
The Grouse Mountain Refuge for Endangered Wildlife participates in the North American Hummingbird Monitoring Network and is the only mountaintop site in BC. The Hummingbird Monitoring Network is monitoring hummingbird populations across western North America and investigating the apparent decline of these magnificent birds. We band every two weeks whenever hummingbirds are present, and data on the age, measurements and health of the birds is collected and compared with other stations.
For more information please see: http://www.hummonnet.org/
