Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Protocols

Dear Students and Teachers,

If your school is in southern Canada or the United States east of the Mississippi River, you probably have a Ruby-throated Hummingbird (RTHU) in your neighborhood-but not right now. RTHUs are warm-weather organisms, so nearly all leave their breeding grounds by mid-October and migrate to Mexico and Central America. About the middle of March, the first RTHUs will head back north and start a new nesting season in most Canadian provinces and 38 U.S. states. Operation RubyThroat, the first GLOBE activity to focus on animal behavior, was initiated in March 2002 as a Special Measurement and is now a Protocol in which students submit data about RTHU observations and correlate them with other GLOBE measurements such as atmosphere, climate, and land cover. RTHUs are the most widely distributed of all 328 species of hummingbirds in North America, but there is much we don't know about their day-to-day behavior and migration patterns.

Through GLOBE, you and your fellow students may discover something brand new and exciting about RTHUs and how they interact with their environment! Wouldn't it be great to collaborate with Operation RubyThroat scientists and actually publish your hummingbird discoveries in a scientific journal? Read over the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Protocols on GLOBE's Web site and start thinking of ways to join the project. You can also find lots of useful background information about hummingbirds on the Operation RubyThroat Web site.

If your school is in Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, or Panama you have even greater opportunity for discovery about RTHUs because little is known about them on their wintering grounds. In what habitats do they spend the winter months? What tropical flowers provide nectar for RTHUs? Are RTHUs territorial in winter in Central America like they are during the breeding season? What kinds of interactions occur among RTHUs and the many species of non-migratory tropical hummingbirds on the wintering grounds? Does tropical weather have a different effect on RTHU behavior than weather in more temperate areas of North America? These are all questions you and your peers may help answer through GLOBE and Operation RubyThroat.

If you do live in the U.S. or Canada and your RTHUs are gone for the winter, it's not too soon for your school to plan to participate in "Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project". Operation RubyThroat protocols describe two hummingbird-related activities you can work on until next spring. One is to plan installation of a Schoolyard Hummingbird Habitat on your campus as a place where you can conduct RTHU observations later on. At Landscaping for Hummingbirds you can get hints on attracting hummingbirds and find lists of native and non-native plants that attract hummingbirds.

You also should keep your eyes open for WINTER hummingbirds in the eastern U.S. and Canada. For reasons we do not yet understand, increasing numbers of hummingbird species from Mexico and the western U.S. are showing up east of the Mississippi in late fall and winter. It is very important that you report any winter hummingbirds in this region because your sightings-especially when correlated with GLOBE data about land cover, atmosphere, climate, and hydrology-may help us learn what factors are causing recent occurrences of winter hummingbirds. See Research: Winter Hummingbird Banding for more details.

Remember, just because it's winter now in the U.S. and Canada doesn't mean you can't be involved in "Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project."

Happy Hummingbird Watching,
BILL HILTON JR.
Principal Investigator, "Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project"
Executive Director, Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History
York, South Carolina USA
projects@rubythroat.org