Hummingbird Festival

Please accept my apology for the many pictures included in this blog. We had such a great time at the Hummingbird Festival, I just want to share every moment.

Below is Josh, Mary Kaitlyn, Madelyn, and Gracie waiting patiently for a hummingbird to be caught and brought over to this station. This was the hummingbird banding station. They measured the bird, weighed the bird, and recorded whether it was male or female. If you look in the background of this picture, you see a man sitting at a table. If you look even closer, you can see many fishing lines leaving his table and leading to behind the building. There were cages back there with hummingbird feeders in them. When the birds entered to cage, the man would use the fishing line to close the cage doors. They would then capture the bird and put it in a mesh bag.

This is a hummingbird being taken out of a mesh bag.

This hummingbird was very vocal. The man wrapped a silk stocking around the bird so he couldn't fly off. It also helped when he laid the bird on the scale to be weighed. This bird weighed between what a penny and nickel weigh.

The bird is being measured. Each captured bird is banded and its measurements recorded.

Below is "Madelyn's" hummingbird. This is the bird that she got to hold before being released.

This is "Mary Kaitlyn's" bird. She also got to hold one that was released after being banded.

This is Stella. She is a barn owl that was rescued from being kept in a parrot cage.

Mary Kaitlyn, Gracie, and Madelyn wear peacock feathers in their hair.

The girls got to look through microscopes.

Mary Kaitlyn touching a lizard. She told the lady that it felt like rubber.

We got to go exploring with a biologist. The girls are in a pond in this picture. The pond was all dried up.

All the children were given nets to catch critters. We saw many bugs and spiders after turning over several logs.