Hummingbird, Finches, and D27

It is hard to see the hummingbirds because they fly quickly in eat and they zoom off.  This morning Mr was just sitting at the top of the tree surveying the land.

 Dad Finch was feeding the kids this morning.  He sure has a lot of red-purple color on him.

From RRP:

D27 finally headed north! We thought she might decide to stay home this year, but she headed north early on the morning of June 3rd! Brett pointed out that she had a good workout between 10:37 to 13:36 on June 9. She covered 76 miles in a three hour span, averaging over 25 miles per hour!

As of her last postcard, she was up in south western Ontario and appeared to be heading for last year's vacation spot. Stay safe, D27 - and don't forget to write!

I asked Brett why subadult eagles migrate. It's been really interesting to see how eagles from the same nest and same parents can be so variable in their behavior: choosing very different summering or wintering grounds, traveling extensively or hardly at all, and even varying the timing of their arrivals and departures. Brett warned me that this was a very brief overview ("Books could be written on the subject!"). He said:

"If the young eagles hail from the north country, i.e. Canada, the reason is pretty straight-forward. They, like adults, head south from that summer range to stay with available food. Snow and ice up north cover nearly everything which makes foraging much more difficult. A few eagles may stay on their summer range, but the area cannot support the usual summer population. Also the sometimes frigid conditions of the north country can be ameliorated by heading south where milder conditions prevail. Young eagles from the southern states perform extensive northward migrations for the summer months, perhaps escaping the heat of the south.

For eagles in our region of the Upper Midwest, things get more variable. As we have seen with our small sample of transmittered Decorah eagles, migration tendencies vary from regular trips north in the summer and back to NE IA for “winter” (Sept. through May or so), to short and/or quick jaunts north, then back “home”, like D-24 has shown, even though his data is sporadic. Some years the birds may not leave their natal area at all. We have seen them move a short ways south to SE IA for winter, for example, then return to NE IA for the summer. The next year they may head into Ontario. The “why” part for these Midwest birds is speculative, in my opinion. Our Decorah birds certainly have enough food in NE IA the entire year to support them, so food isn’t the driver. It may just be to check out other areas that could be their summer range somewhere in the future. I’m not so sure about this, however, because some transmittered eagles have shown the tendency to establish a territory near their natal area, so why would they bother checking out new territory