Local filmmaker captures hummingbirds for PBS (CT)

[Donna]

Filmmaker Ann Prum of New Haven used high-tech cameras to film elusive hummingbirds, shown here in photos from her upcoming PBS documentary. (Peter Casolino/Register)

NEW HAVEN — Ann Prum is a patient woman.
Staring for hours at a clump of flowers heavy with nectar, with her Phantom high speed camera, her computer and a technician at the ready, Prum has put together a documentary on the smallest warm-blooded creatures on the planet — hummingbirds — and in the process shares the newest science on these avian jewels.
“In all wildlife films, you are waiting for the bus. Is the bus coming or is it the totally wrong bus stop? Once you have waited an hour and a half, does that mean it is never coming or does that mean it is just about to come?� said Prum, describing part of her routine for eight months of shooting in South America and the Caribbean.
“Hummingbirds: Magic in the Air� will be shown on the PBS show, “Nature,� on Jan. 10.
Prum, who lives in the East Rock neighborhood with her husband, scientist Richard Prum, and their three sons, has made 10 films for television, in addition to museum-based and Web-based video for Yale University.
She won a regional Emmy for “Creating the Peabody’s
Torosaurus: Dinosaur Science, Dinosaur Art,� which showed the development of the statute of the dinosaur outside Yale’s natural history museum.
Her forte is illuminating the newest discoveries by scientists that blow apart our preconceived notions of animals. “These are the kinds of films I like to make. They say, you think you know this animal … but we actually don’t know them at all,� Prum said.
The high-tech cameras allowed her to slow down the hummingbirds in flight, shoot mating displays and diving displays, and as the film points out, “break down the barriers of time and space.�
While there are 350 species of hummingbirds, Prum concentrated on a few being studied by scientists, as well as some with a real “gee-whiz� component, such as the swordbill hummingbird, whose 4-inch bill is twice as long as its body and the endangered Marvelous Spatuletail, which has two fan-like balls at the end of its tail.
Not only are these birds beautiful, but they are feisty creatures built for survival who often engage in aerial dogfights to protect a food source, Prum said.
“They are tough. People think they are delicate and jewel-like. They are not like that at all. They are tough as nails. They are incredibly competitive — really defending their resources. It’s the difference between life and death for them, they live so on the edge,� Prum said.
The film answers the basic question “How did they do that?� Since flowers don’t provide a place for the hummingbird to perch, their ability to hover like an insect enables them to dine on nectar, which they consume daily at the rate of half their body weight. Another quarter of their diet is supplied by insects for protein.
Their lower bills bend in the middle and act like a catcher’s mitt to nail fruit flies in mid-flight with deadly accuracy.
“They are less like Tinkerbell and more like Jaws,� according to the film.
Their metabolism is stuck in overdrive with 600 heartbeats per minute at rest, according to the film, and twice that when they are flying.
The Ruby-throated hummer, common in North America, beats its wings an average of 53 times per second, which is why they seldom provide more than a fleeting glimpse to the human eye.
Scientist Douglas Altshuler of the University of California at Riverside found they have flexible shoulders which allow them to move in a figure eight, fly backwards, turn on a dime and briefly fly upside down.
Prum, 47, spent most of her time with her family in the small town of Mindo, Ecuador — the epicenter of hummingbird diversity — when her husband was on sabbatical.
She studied the swordbill hummingbird and the evolutionary bond between them and their favorite plant, the datura, with its long dangling trumpet-shaped flowers. These hummers’ bills are perfectly shaped to reach the nectar deep inside. The birds then carry the pollen from flower to flower.
“The ultimate in flower power,� according to the narrator, actor F. Murray Abraham, commenting on the evolution of the swordbill to accommodate its food source.
A total of 8,000 plant species depend on hummingbirds for pollination.
In Dominica, a Caribbean island south of St. Lucia, Amherst professor Ethan Temeles found examples of sexual dimorphism, where the male purple throated caribe has a short, straight beak and the female’s is longer and curved.
The theory is that the stronger male took over the easier food source, forcing the female to differentiate, confirming what Darwin predicted happens within the same species. Prum took her camera to the highlands of Ecuador, where she found an example of adaptation. The Andean Hillstar lives at the edge of the glaciers, and hops on the ground from flower to flower, thereby using less energy than trying to fly in the oxygen-thin habitat, 12,000 feet above sea level.
Back in California at Berkeley, doctorial student Christopher Clark wanted to know how the male Anis hummingbird made a high-pitched yelp as part of a spectacular diving pattern to attract the female.
With video equipment that shot 500 frames per second you can see the Anis dropping 100 feet at 60 mph, the equivalent of a G-force of 10, enough to black out a fighter pilot.
At the end, it spreads its tail feathers, which vibrate like a reed in a clarinet, producing the characteristic chirping sound. Clark is now doing post-doctoral work at Yale.
In the remote farming community of Pomacochas, in northeastern Peru, Prum documented the search for the Marvelous Spatuletail, which twirls its tail like a cowboy with a rope in a mating dance.
It is believed that there are fewer than 1,000 of them left, as expanding sugar cane cultivation destroys their habitat, but farmer Santos Montenagro is trying to reverse that.
“It’s this great little story about a local guy who didn’t start out to be a conservationist, but he cared about everything around him and now he is the protector of the Spatuletail,� Prum said. Montenagro is planting trees and established a reserve for them as part of a small-scale eco-tourism attraction which he hopes brings some money into the local economy.
The film also documents the extraordinary migration patterns of the tiny, 3-gram bird, from central Mexico to southern Alaska. Some will fly 500 miles across the Gulf of Mexico, an 18 hour trip, with no food.
Prum caught up with hummingbird enthusiasts throughout the country who band the small creatures to track migration, with most returning to the same gardens and breeding grounds every year.
It didn’t make it into the film, but Prum found hundreds of people who came by to view a hummingbird who must have gotten blown off course and ended up at a feeder in West Hartford in the winter, where the owner had set up a small heater.
“People were so invested in this little bird that clearly was not going to make it. Hummingbirds really have a way if capturing people.
It feels really special when you see one,� Prum said.
She describes herself as an “armchair scientist,� who got interested in filmmaking and wildlife as part of some opportunities offered through Bowdoin College when she was an undergraduate. She met her husband when she was a field assistant on a series on the Amazon produced by Jacques Cousteau.
Richard Prum, a professor of ornithology and chairman of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale, is known for his work on the evolution of feather structure. His theory ties bird origins closely to a group of dinosaurs; the professor was a recent recipient of a $500,000 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Award. One of Ann Prum’s films documents the dinosaur-bird connection.
Next up for Ann Prum is a film on bats, which are facing a lot of problems from white nose disease, a fungal infection that is decimating some populations.
“It will be a challenge to film because like birds, they are small and fast, but you have the nighttime challenge as well,� said Prum, who is looking forward to illuminating the newest science as it tries to save these creatures.