I'm a master bird bander, and my research focuses on wintering hummingbirds in the southeastern United States. In particular, I am studying wintering Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, a species that normally migrates to the tropics.
One of my goals is to determine the breeding range of the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds that winter in the Southeast. Even though many Ruby-throated have been recaptured for consecutive winters in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama, no one has ever captured one of these birds during the summer months. We don't know whether these wintering Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are year-round residents or whether they breed in the northern U.S. or Canada and migrate to the Southeast in the autumn.
During 2011, I also continued a multi-year project to band and study Ruby-throated Hummingbirds during the summer months in the western provinces of Canada. With a grant from the Baillie Fund of Bird Studies Canada, I was able to band in Alberta and British Columbia this year, and found breeding Ruby-throated Hummingbirds in northeastern British Columbia, the farthest north and west they have ever been documented.
Another facet of my research is to band and document the western species of hummingbirds that sometimes occur in the southeastern U.S., including Rufous, Black-chinned, Calliope, Allen's (pictured above in photo taken by Joe Misiaszek) and Buff-bellied Hummingbirds.
I'm affiliated with two nonprofit organizations, Hummingbird Research, Inc. and the Hummer/Bird Study Group. With Fred Bassett, I have co-authored a research paper, "Wintering hummingbirds in Alabama and Florida: species diversity, sex and age ratios, and site fidelity." It was published in the June 2009 issue of the Journal of Field Ornithology, a peer-reviewed publication. Read the abstract.
Every April and October, I band at the Hummer/Bird Study Group's Fort Morgan, Alabama banding station, located where Mobile Bay meets the Gulf of Mexico. This area is the first landfall in the spring (and the last in the fall) for the warblers, tanagers, orioles, vireos, thrushes, and other species of birds that fly 500 miles or more nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico.
