12 March 2024
TOPEKA (KSNT) – Hummingbird migration has been starting earlier and reports say some are staying in state all winter.
These tiny birds are among the smallest in the world, according to the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. With 319 species living in North and South America, 15 are found in the U.S. with only one regularly appearing in Kansas: ruby-throated hummingbirds. These birds can be found in wild nesting along streams and woodland parks with most of their numbers located in the eastern half of the state. They are occasionally mistaken for an insect that mimics their looks and behaviors.
Hummingbirds typically travel south to southern Mexico and Central America during the winter months and return in the summer when there’s lots of food and less competition. K-State Professor of Biology Alice Boyle said it’s generally safer for the birds to raise their young in the temperate Kansas weather.
“The scariest time of a bird’s life is when it can’t fly! Most birds die before they even fledge,” Boyle said. “So geographic differences in how risky it is for eggs and nestlings help explain migration patterns.”
Boyle said it can be hard to tell that the hummingbird spring migration is getting earlier because of the wide variety of temperatures each year. Overall, birds are coming back earlier and earlier.
Hummingbirds don’t migrate in packs like other birds and travel independently. Many have been spotted as early as February and staying all winter, according to onlyinyourstate.com.
Some hummingbirds migrate across the Gulf of Mexico and can travel as much as 23 miles in a day. During the migration over the Gulf of Mexico, they can cover 500 miles at a time, according to hummingbirdcentral.com.
Boyle said there have been scattered reports from Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas of the birds staying in-state all winter.
“There was a hummingbird of another species (Anna’s) that spent a lot of time this winter in central Kansas,” Boyle said. “It is hard to say exactly why. With hummingbirds (as in other small migratory birds), migration is innate.”
Boyle said hummingbird migration is essentially programmed into the birds, but just like humans, the birds have a lot of behavioral nuances. Boyle said some hummingbird programming “isn’t so good” and they might suffer a migratory mishap. When the birds do make a mistake, some can make the best of the situation and survive with increasingly warming winters.
“When they live and things don’t turn out badly,” Boyle said. “The trait to stay can be inherited by their offspring. Although migration requires a lot of complex physiological, behavioral, and neurological programming, it turns out that when we take the big view of bird migration, it seems to turn on and off across species relatively quickly and easily.”
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