CASSCOE — Two Arkansans hold hummingbirds in their hands nearly every day.
If you ask them nicely, they will let you watch.
Don McSwain and Tana Beasley, aka “Team Bandit,” catch and release many angry little birds as part of their daily work for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
McSwain, a former high school teacher and wildlife officer, is facility manager for the Potlatch Conservation Education Center at Cook’s Lake, a quiet building on a gravel road in the White River Wildlife Management Area about 20 miles from Stuttgart. Beasley, who recently retired from teaching high school biology, is the center’s education specialist.
If banding hummingbirds were an Olympic event, Team Bandit would win gold. In 2009, slightly more than 17,000 ruby-throated hummingbirds were reportedly banded by 80 banding stations in North and South America. The Bandit team, staff of two, accounted for about 8 percent of those banded hummers - significantly more than most.
Their bird banding table in the Paul Spradlin Educational Building is surrounded by all kinds of animal exhibits, from large-predator skull reproductions to actual animal hides. Amber light shines through small-critter skeletons preserved in jars on a window sill.
They describe the building aptly as “part classroom, part museum and part playground.” They often host school groups on field trips and delight in showing deer to children who may have just spotted their first live cow during the drive from town.
The coach and trainer of the Bandit team are Bob and Martha Sargent, a husband-wife duo from south Alabama. The Sargents are to hummingbird banding what John Wooden is to NCAA basketball. Of the hundred or so master hummingbird banders in the nation, the Sargents have trained about 80.
Bob Sargent considers McSwain and Beasley as two of the most dedicated banders in the South because of “the fire in their gut for hummingbirds and their willingness to share that passion with others.” Sargent also believes that their location - the Cook’s Lake banding station - gives Team Bandit a home court advantage. The area has an abundance of old growth hardwood trees, and water is plentiful. For rubythroated hummingbirds, it’s as rich a habitat as any place in the nation.
Banding involves placing tiny metal bracelets about the size of a wristwatch knob on the birds’ tiny legs. The team has placed such bands on the right legs of 1,400 hummingbirds since 2009. They expect that total will reach 2,000 by the end of September.
The delicate work of trapping, banding, measuring bird wings and beaks, recording that information by hand and releasing the birds can be a year-round job. They are busiest May through September. August is the peak time.
TRAPPING
To capture the birds, Mc-Swain and Beasley first teach them that the center’s a great place to eat by keeping plenty of clear sugar water in 15 red hummingbird feeders outside. Crape myrtles planted around the building also provide nourishment - protein in the form of insects.
To trap a bird, McSwain and Beasley move all the feeders indoors except one, which they put inside a cage with an open door that will snap closed when they pull a length of red monofilament - fishing line.
They set up the line so they can trip the cage door from inside the building. All a bird-trapper has to do is watch out the window. When a bird enters the cage (usually in less than two minutes), a tug springs the trap. Sometimes three or four birds are captured at once, and if visitors are at the education center, they will be allowed to pull the line.
But no visitors handle trapped birds. Only the experienced banders take birds from the trap.
By reaching into the cage, they hold the bird near the tips of their fingers, being careful to keep its wings against the bird’s body so it will not injure itself. Hummingbirds are hardy little creatures, but their bones are fragile. So fragile, in fact, that if you were holding one in your hand and coughed, the automatic jerk in finger muscles might crush its rib cage or break its breastbone.
If a bander feels a sneeze coming on he should release the bird and let it fly away. Gezundflight!
BANDING
With bird in hand, the bander next places the hummer in a mesh bag that can be secured by a drawstring until the actual banding can be done. Usually the birds quickly become docile inside the mesh bag, but they do shed a few feathers, which indicates they’re unhappy.
When McSwain takes a bird out of the mesh bag, he tucks the toe of a nylon stocking around it, holding the wings snug. The bander works through the opening in the stocking to measure and band the bird.
Aluminum bands are prepared before the birds are trapped, so they won’t be confined for long. Each band has a unique code printed on it. The bands are so small it takes 5,500 bands to weigh 1 ounce. A band is placed on the right leg below the knee of the hummer by means of a special pair of pliers calibrated to secure the band snuggly but not pinch the bird.
The band code provides a way to identify each individual if it is recaptured. Tracking birds by their codes, scientists can learn about the range, longevity, migration patterns, population changes and habits of birds.
Each time a banded bird is trapped, data are collected. In addition to determining its species and sex, the lengths of its wing, tail and bill are measured. The bird is weighed, and examination of a groove in the bill is helpful in determining its age.
A bander can examine a bird to tell if it is pregnant or merely storing fat for migration.
Banding usually takes eight minutes, and the team tries to work as quickly as possible. They may stop working from time to time to allow the hummer to drink from a feeder, which it usually does with relish, even while being held. Once asMcSwain was banding a bird it laid an egg.
After all the data have been collected, the bird is released where it was captured.
Visitors at the education center may have the thrill of having one of the banders place a newly banded bird in their open palm. If you are that lucky one, you can feel the bird’s 106-degree body temperature and the 1,200 beats per minute of its heart.
It will perch briefly, sense its freedom, then fly away to the forest. How cool is that?
A SPECIAL SPECIES
The number of rubythroats that frequent the feeders at the banding station is impressive. Last week, Beasley and McSwain said they were seeing many recently hatched birds and catching them for the first time. In August when the population peaks, the hummers will be thick as swarms of insects. So many, in fact, that they consumed 700 pounds of sugar last summer.
“The state auditor accused us of making moonshine down here,” McSwain quipped. With a wink he added, “Well, we made a little ‘shine,’ but the bulk of it went for the birds.”
With all the artificial nectar available, it might seem that the birds have little trouble finding nourishment. Actually, more than 60 percent of the hummers’ diet is insects. In addition to all the carbohydrates provided by flowers and feeders, hummingbirds stay busy catching gnats, spiders, mosquitoes and flies to provide protein to feed young birds and the energy to flit about at such great speeds.
Hummingbirds do not hum, although they do make little squeaking songs in their throats. The song is almost inaudible over the noise of their wings. These can flutter up to 200 times per second, but they don’t just flap up and down. They “draw” a figure eight with each beat.
Hummers fly fast, up to 60 mph in a dive, during which birdwatchers have trouble just seeing them, much less “watching” them. The wing sound is more like a “buzz” to me than a “humm” when they fly, but “buzzingbird” is not as charming a name.
They make quite a racket around the feeders, with the wing noise and nearly constant tweeting and squabbling. The tiny birds are aggressive.
“They’re mean,” McSwain says. “If they were the size of buzzards I’d be afraid to go outside.”
The Cook’s Lake banding station is a joint effort of the Game and Fish Commission, the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Hummingbird banding permits are issued only by the U.S. Department of Interior, and Don McSwain holds the only master hummingbird banding license in Arkansas.
Data gathered from the banding of all species of birds is kept by the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md.
Team Bandit also conducts classes on other outdoor topics including map reading, tree identification (called “Leaf It to Me”) and “snakeology.” Guests must call ahead to arrange a visit.
Celia Storey added information to this report. Jerry Butler is a frequent contributor to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on topics concerning birds. He welcomes comments and stories about birds in Arkansas. E-mail him at
ActiveStyle, Pages 25 on 07/26/2010