Success! Our RFID tag readers work! It turns out that our new RFID tags are on a slightly different frequency to the ones we piloted last year (basically they communicate in a different language). So, the readers work with the new tags. Today was a very good day to be a field biologist. We got up at 5:15 am, loaded up our back-packs with batteries (packs weighing about the same as an average grade 5 student), our hummingbird banding gear, hummingbird traps and nets, and the readers of course.
The jungle hike into our hummingbird capture site
It wasn’t a very long walk this morning – only about 20-30 minutes down the Rio Java trail in the jungle reserve. We had ‘mist-nets’ set up by 6:30 (mist-nets are like gigantic hairnets (12 x 2 meters: 32 x 6 ft) that we string between two bamboo poles in hopes that a hummingbird will accidentally fly into it and get caught). Sure enough, by 7:00 we had caught five green hermits (one of our study species). So that we can recognize these birds in future years, we put tiny metal rings on their legs. We also put a small dab of nail polish in their heads so that we can recognize them through binoculars in the coming weeks (this falls off when they grow new feathers). Also, we attached the RFID tags so that when a bird goes near our feeders, we can tell who they are and when they visited without even seeing them!
A green hermit hummingbird (Phaethornis guy) with RFID tag.
We also put up 5 RFID readers within 100 m of where we captured the birds. The plan is to gradually expand this reader network outwards so that we can measure how far each individual travels in a typical day.
Here is a photo of one of our birds with an RFID tag. We test the tag by putting the bird through the antenna of the RFID reader. We then let the bird go. So that the bird doesn’t get too stressed and energy low by being captured, we give them some sugarwater for the journey. Sometimes they drink so much they have trouble taking off from our hands!
Pink nail polish on the head allows us to ID them through binoculars
