Female Rufous Hummingbird, sporting a leg band on her right leg. Photo by Fred Dietrich.
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For hummingbird lovers in North Florida, October is a bittersweet time. We see a lot of visitors at our nectar feeders for the first two weeks as Ruby-throated Hummingbirds migrate south, their breeding season completed. By month’s end, they are gone and most people sadly take down their feeders for the winter. But WAIT, THERE’S MORE—Winter Hummingbirds! Fred Dietrich will talk about his volunteer work banding various species of winter hummingbirds in the southeast and explain how you can help the birds and the research community studying them.
About Fred Dietrich
Fred recording a hummingbird’s measurements.
I grew up in Tallahassee and have been working with hummingbird banding since 2001. I retired in 2008 and received my federal permit to band hummingbirds in 2009.
The banding is part of a study of hummingbirds that spend the winter in the southeast rather than migrate to the tropics. We have banded more than 800 wintering hummingbirds of 13 species in Tallahassee in the last 25 years.
We are in the final testing stages of being able to track hummingbirds using minuscule solar powered trackers. Early results have exceeded all expectations and will rewrite what we thought was known about their migration paths.
I would encourage everyone to leave up at least one feeder all year long since there some hummingbirds here in every month of the year.
NOTE: “Just months after he was certified, a Rufous Hummingbird he banded in Tallahassee in January 2010 was found five months later by a fellow bander in Chenga Bay, Alaska, more than 3,500 miles away. It remains the longest-ever recorded migration of any hummingbird species.” Read more in Jennifer Portman’s 2014 Article in the Tallahassee Democrat.
Fred holding a first-year male Rufous Hummingbird, captured and banded February 2025. Photo by Kathleen Carr.
