Tiny Spirit in the Sky

If you want to see hummingbirds, the Discover Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville, Tennessee, is a good place to start. These tiny winged creatures are delightful to spot as the hover effortlessly at a feeder. 

Ijams Visitor Services Manager Sarah Brobst says they have between 30-40 feeders up during the peak hummingbird season in the summer months that see a lot of hummingbird activity. 

About a decade ago, Discover Ijams partnered with the Tennessee Ornithological Society to create an annual Hummingbird Festival. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Ijams officials are considering how to move forward. 

Ijams is a regular stop-over for hummingbirds, and even if the August festival doesn’t go on as normally planned, it won’t stop the hummingbirds from their yearly flight patterns. 

Since they band as many hummingbirds as they can (somewhere between 25-30 each festival), they are able to witness return visitors. 

“We have a lot of repeat hummingbirds that are coming through,” says Brobst. “It’s amazing these birds travel hundreds, if not thousands of miles. We see them year after year coming back to the same feeders. They make Ijams a stop-over on their regular voyage.”

Master bird bander Mark Armstrong, who is a retired Bird Curator for Zoo Knoxville, has banded hummingbirds every year the festival has been in existence. 

They have two ways of capturing the hummingbirds. 

The first is a metal cage with a sliding door that fits around the feeder. Once a bird flies in to enjoy some food, a volunteer will slide the door shut. 

The second method is using fine mesh nets to trap the birds. 

After a bird is captured, they transfer it to a small bag to prepare for banding. 

“Bird safety is the most important thing,” says Armstrong. 

“If we are concerned at all about a bird, we turn it loose, but if it’s in good shape we lay it on its back, measure the wings and tail, age it, and determine its sex. We check it real closely and then band it. It’s like an ankle bracelet. It fits loosely and moves up and down.” 

The aluminum band is 5.6 mm long that’s formed into a circle. Armstrong will open it to fit over a bird’s leg and then close the band with a pair of plyers. The band has a letter and five numbers on it for tracking. 

“I have a federal permit to band birds, and I report back to a banding lab,” says Armstrong. “If someone catches a banded bird, they can go to Reportband.gov and get an instant result on where and when the bird was banded. If you’re extremely lucky, someone else may catch the bird you band.”

He says almost everyone has a hummingbird story and often it involves having a hummingbird in their garage. 

“Their instinct is to go up when they feel threatened so when they are in a garage they go above head level and are hard to catch,” says Armstrong. “That’s to their detriment a lot of times. But you can open the garage door and put a feeder down low. They can usually find their way out that way.” 

Taking flight 

The standard routine at the Hummingbird Festival is to allow small groups to witness Armstrong banding a bird, along with hearing information about the birds and their migratory patterns. 

While there are different varieties of hummingbirds, the ones they capture in the summer are ruby throated hummingbirds. 

The hummingbirds are more active earlier in the morning when its cooler so they’ve learned that 8 to 11 a.m. is the best time to capture and band them. 

Once the bird is checked out and banded, a volunteer will hand it to someone in the audience and allow them to release it.

Armstrong says the birds spend time fattening up to make their journey. “Males weigh about 2.8 grams and females weigh 3.3 grams. They are capable of weighing up to 5 grams for males and 6 grams for females,” explains Armstrong. “They’ll put on a lot of fat on their belly and back of neck. That’s their fuel. That’s what they use to migrate.”

He says it’s challenging to believe that such a small bird can make a 6,000-mile trip across the Gulf of Mexico, but they do it. 

“A lot of folks think—I get this every year—they think that hummingbirds migrate on the backs of geese, but I can assure you they do not,” says Armstrong. “It’s an individual journey. They fly on their own. They are not hitchhikers.” 

How to attract hummingbirds 

Putting up a feeder is one of the more obvious ways to draw hummingbirds to your yard, but Sarah Brobst, visitor services manager at Discover Ijams Nature Center, cautions about the contents. 

“Don’t use red dye in nectar,” she says, ‘it can actually harm them.”

If you make your own nectar—combining one part sugar to four parts water and heating to dissolve the sugar—experts advise not to substitute the sugar with honey, brown sugar, molasses or artificial sugar substitutes, which can be dangerous for the birds and/or not supply the nutritional value they need for energy to migrate. Make sure to completely cool the nectar before putting in a feeder. 

Other ways to attract hummingbirds: 

y Plant colorful flowers (they particularly love red ones). Mark Armstrong, retired Bird Curator at Zoo Knoxville, says he particularly likes to plant such varieties as dwarf red buckeye, black and blue salvia, bee balm, butterfly bush and cardinal flower, to name a few. 

y Don’t use insecticides. Armstrong says “Hummingbirds are little fly catchers. They feed on insects and nectar. They need aphids and spiders that they glean from vegetation.”

y Keep plenty of nectar inside feeders. “Change the nectar every few days, especially in summer,” says Armstrong. “It will spoil it it’s out in the sun and it’s percolating and you don’t change it for five days or so,” He says it’s best to place feeders in the shade. 

y Choose the right feeder. Armstrong suggests using one with a wide mouth that’s easy to fill and easy to clean. “So many pretty feeders out there are a nightmare to keep clean,” he says. “You want to be able to take the base apart and get in there with a brush and clean it out really good. Use a diluted bleach solution and then rinse it really well before putting clean nectar in. Mold can start to grow when a feeder isn’t clean. Mold is a big enemy of hummingbirds—it can start growing in their mouths.”

Want to go?

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced many changes including advice not to allow large gatherings. At this writing, Ijams officials are exploring options for this year’s festival, if they decide to proceed. While it would be impossible to allow lines of people to witness the hummingbird banding, they are considering some sort of live stream that would be available to people in the park as well as people at home. Options for speakers and demonstrations could involve outdoor classrooms where they can appropriately space out those present. The best advice is to keep an eye on their website: ijams.org to see what the final decisions are regarding this year’s Hummingbird Festival.