The Hummingbird Lady

[Donna]

Laplace - There's something fascinating about seeing a tiny hummingbird zipping around your yard. And there are some places in south Louisiana where even on one of the coldest days of the year, the hummingbirds are buzzing.

One Metairie woman is rewriting the book on what is known about the tiny creatures.

"We think of birds as being our birds. But these birds are international travelers," says hummingbird enthusiast Nancy Newfield.

It's one of the coldest days of the year in Laplace. The temperature is near 20 degrees. But for Nancy, this is prime time for observing Louisiana's winter hummingbirds.

"They have not forgotten to migrate. They have come from someplace else to spend their winters with us in Louisiana."

Newfield says that fact contradicts a popular notion that people should pick up hummingbird feeders during the cold months.

"Here in Louisiana we are blessed with having two completely different overlapping seasons and we can have hummingbirds in our gardens 365 days a year."

Newfield is known as "the hummingbird lady". She and fellow hummingbird lovers have work to do. The Laplace home of Stuart Lasseigne is loaded with hummingbirds.

"I'll put 30 feeders up and i'll go through a gallon of sugar water a day. Once you start doing it you really need to keep doing it because the birds kind of depend on you," Lasseigne says.

The two friends set up traps that are baited with sweetened water and it's only a matter of time before a hummingbird is lured inside.

During 3 decades of work, Newfield and her friends have captured and banded 4700 hummingbirds. And that research has rewritten the book on Louisiana's smallest birds.

Back in the 1970's when Nancy Newfield began her study of hummingbirds, only 5 species of the hummers had been seen in Louisiana. Now that number has more than doubled.

"We're finding that we see 8 species every Winter, sometimes 9 or ten. And to me that's just fascinating having grown up believing that there was only one kind of hummingbird in the whole world," says Newfield.

Every bird gets a tiny numbered band around its leg. Up to 20 of the bands fit on a single diaper pin.

Newfield peers beneath feathers, looking for fat and signs of molting. The beaks are measured, along with wings and the tail. The major feathers are counted and the small birds are weighed. All of the data is then recorded. When a banded bird is recaptured, it's file gets updated.

A hummingbird's average lifespan is 3 to 4 years. But Newfield says she has seen some exceed that.

"The longest returning bird i've ever had was a buff bellied right here in the town of Laplace. It returned here for 9 years."

30 years of banding has allowed Newfield to track the migrations of some of her Louisiana birds. A bird she banded in Metairie was spotted in Washington state, 2100 miles away and one she caught in Houma made a 1500 mile trek to Idaho.

"I think it's really neat to have the same birds come back every year because they come from such long distances," Lasseigne says.

Over the last 3 decades, Nancy Newfield and her volunteers have banded almost 5,000 winter hummingbirds in Louisiana.

[Annette]

A very interesting article about hummingbirds. Thank you for sharing.