It’s been a hot minute since I posted a new blog. Time has marched on as it often does without ceremony.
We had a good winter hummingbird season. Traveled all across Tennessee, banding these special hibernal visitors. By January 15, 2025, we had banded 13 in total; mostly Rufous hummingbirds, a couple late Ruby-throats, ending the season with a female, Black-chinned hummingbird in Kilmichael, Mississippi. It’s always a pleasure meeting all our wonderful hosts, enjoying their hospitality for an hour or two and getting updates from them through the season.
Spring finally arrived and our ruby-throats made a slow return. Here at our place, our first male appeared on the latest date ever for a spring return and then it was weeks before we finally saw a female. Currently our numbers are steady and normal for this time of the year.
Meanwhile our banding schedule has been set, and preparations are well underway for our two additional research projects that will run concurrently this summer. More on those in a future post.
However, sadly all could come to a screeching halt IF proposed action by the current Administration to eliminate and defund the ENTIRE Ecosystems Mission Area, which would shutter the Bird Banding Lab, come to fruition. This would immediately put an end to our research. No BBL, no banding authorization. But that’s just the tip of the ‘iceberg’ as defunding would also put an end to the Breeding Bird Survey, research on seabirds and avian (and related human) infectious diseases (like avian flu). Research and monitoring that provides vital information on a host of other plants and animals, including fish and other aquatic life, and insects especially pollinators like bees and Monarch Butterflies. Programs important to wildlife management, affecting hunting and fishing, will be seriously affected as well if the Ecosystem Mission Area is eliminated. In other words, this is a broad-based threat that will affect not just birds and our research but hunting, fishing, and agriculture.
So, what can be done? Personally, I’ve written letters and sent testimony of the importance of the work we do. Many others within the research community has done the same and you can do it too if you’re so inclined. We’re not asking for ‘more’ we’re just asking to be kept open and funded at the same level we’ve operated with for years.
For now, we continue on. Breeding bird studies are being conducted, hummingbird bands are being made, and we’re proceeding as if life was ‘normal’. Time will tell if we’ve been heard and if we can continue to do this important work.
