birdnote q&a: your questions answered on hummingbird migration, and flying in formation
Remember the BirdNote backstory from last week: In 2002, the then-executive director of Seattle Audubon heard a short public-radio show called StarDate. “We could do that with birds,” she thought. In 2005 the idea became a two-minute, seven-day-a-week public-radio “interstitial” (as short programs are called) that recently caught my ear. I asked BirdNote to help me answer all the recent bird questions you had asked me. (In case you missed it last week, for installment Number 1, we tackled this subject: How do birds make themselves at home—even in winter?)
Parts of Ellen’s answers below are in the 2-minute clips you can stream (all in the green links–or you can read the transcripts of each episode at those links if you prefer). Here we go:
how do hummingbirds do it?Q. The miracle of hummingbird migration amazes all of us. How do they manage to migrate from the northern United States all the way to Mexico and beyond?
A. The rufous hummingbird flies 49,000,000 times its body-length as it makes its full migration loop. Other hummingbirds may fly directly across the Gulf of Mexico, a journey of nearly 600 miles. The birds often follow a “floral highway,” making their way north as the plants that can sustain them come into bloom. From BirdNote, listen to the myths of hummingbird migration.
Rufous hummingbirds begin to turn up in the Pacific Northwest as early
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