In their responses to my posting about sex ratios in
Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (RTHUs) I have banded here
at Hilton Pond in the north central Piedmont of South
Carolina, Tom Bailey and Walt Williams had some questions.

I stated that among 1,190 RTHUs banded since 1984,
immature males outnumber immature females 3:2,
while the ratio is reversed for adult birds. In this posting,
AHY means After-Hatching-Year (adult), and HY means
Hatching-Year (immature).

Tom asks:
"What time of year do you do this sampling? I had made
my observation about hummers that I see at my feeders
in the late summer/early fall. (the only time I can get
them.... Obviously, you won't see HY-M's too early in the
year.)"

Bill's response:
The numbers reported are for 10 banding seasons and
include all RTHUs handled. (Earliest RTHU banding at
Hilton Pond was 3/27/91, latest was 10/18/86.)

Tom & Walt ask:
"How does one distinguish a HY-M from a female?
For that matter how does one distinguish a AHY-F
from a HY-F? (In the field, not in the hand)."

Bill's response:
I don't believe it's possible to differentiate HY males
from females "in the field" with more than about 60%
reliability; a stationary bird perched at a feeder may
provide enough clues at close range to boost that to 75%.
Although I haven't worked up actual percentages (but
think I will--thanks for the idea!) the majority of HY males
have moderate to dark streaking on the throat; HY females
(and adult females) typically have light streaking or none
at all. By August, many HY males also have at least one--
often several--red throat feathers that are pretty obvious
in the right light. White tail spots are found in any age
females and in HY males, so that is not a discriminating
factor.

For the record, it's VERY easy to differentiate between HY
males and females in the hand. The 6th primary (fifth
feather in from the outside) in the male's wing is sharply
pointed, while the female's is rounded. In addition, males
have no white on the fourth (from the outside) rectrix (tail
feather); females have at least a trace of white, and usually
show more.

There is no apparent way to differentiate HY females from
older females in the field. In the hand, the gape (bill lining)
is yellow or orange in HY birds and white or gray or horn-
colored in the adult; this is true for both sexes. Feather wear
and color are also a factor in ageing females, but are not as
reliable as mouth color.

--------

I also listed the subsequent-year return rate by age and sex
of RTHUs I had banded previously at Hilton Pond:

AHY-M 14 or 118 (11.9%)
AHY-F 28 of 166 (16.9%)
HY-M 20 of 413 (4.8%)
HY-F 52 of 317 (16.4%)

Walt asks:
"How do you get a 5% return rate in a subsequent year of
HY males? What am I missing? Are these males that did not
moult into adult plumage?"

Bill's response:
The age categories listed are for the age of the bird at
banding. Thus, for all 118 AHY-M banded through 1992,
a total of 14 (11.9%) returned in at least one
subsequent year. Therefore, all females and AHY-M show a
"good" return rate, while young males banded in the summer
of their hatching seldom return.

Tom comments:
"Reasonable hypotheses to explain these data would include
lack of site loyalty by young males, or a higher mortality
rate in males. (What's the answer?)"

Bill's response:
These are, indeed, reasonable explanations; both may be
factors. (I'm hoping someone will come up with additional
hypotheses for discussion . . . . . )

-----------

Tom asks:
"Would you care to speculate as to why it seems easier to
attract hummers in the late summer/early fall based upon
these data? I think I'm not the only one to experience this
phenomenon. I'm guessing there's just more hummers and
fewer flowers."

Bill's response:
Again, I think you're right on both counts; by late summer,
the RTHU population may have at least doubled (each
female lays two eggs, and there's evidence for double-
brooding in southern locations); that's a lot more mouths
to feed. In addition, RTHUs go through hyperphagia prior
to fall migration, i.e., they eat like crazy, put on fat, and
may double their weight. In addition, many feeder birds
are probably immatures that haven't gotten very good yet
at finding natural food sources. Lastly, the further south
you live, the more hummers you are likely to see over time;
you have your local RTHUs, plus you get fall migrants
moving through (and sometimes staying for a few days to
refuel.)

Ain't hummingbirds great!


Bill Hilton Jr.
"The Piedmont Naturalist"
Hilton Pond
1432 DeVinney Road
York, South Carolina 29745
(803)684-0255

hiltonb at ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 16 May 1994 16:04:40 -0500
From: Paul DeBenedictis <BENEDICT at SNYSYRV1.BITNET>
Subject: Burt Monroe

Burt Monroe, Jr., passed away after a long illness on Saturday, 14 May.
He'll be greatly missed by the ornithological community. I don't have any
other details at this time.

Paul DeBenedictis
SUNY Health Science Center at Syracuse

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 10:20:15 -0400
From: David Haines <dhaines at ABACUS.BATES.EDU>
Subject: Botflies Hazardous to Birders

This is a copy of some interchanges I started on the Internet some
time ago. I apologize for not sending you copies at the time, but I
must have forgotten. Read it and enjoy it!





November 3, 1993


To: Birdchatters
From: David Haines
Re: Still another hazard for birders

As if the tropics don't already carry enough threats for
birders...I refer you to an article in the latest issue of the
_Journal of the American Medical Association_. It may save you
some expensive mis-diagnoses and treatments:

A man who had travelled to Costa Rica found several small
bumps on his back, which he assumed were insect bites. They
became quite sore and "tiny white things with black eyes" were
seen to protrude for the hole from time to time. "Close
observation revealed a moving form with white spiracles bobbing
in and out of the aperture of each nodule."

I turns out that certain flies in the tropics lay their eggs
on the bellies of mosquitoes. When the mosquito bites its host,
the eggs fall off and the larvae bore into the skin, where they
become maggots (18-24 mm maggots!).

As one would expect, most North American doctors have
difficulty diagnosing and treating the problem. The solution,
however, is a happy one: "Multiple strips of raw bacon were
placed over lesions.... Within 3 hours, the larvae had migrated
sufficiently into the bacon fat to be grasped with tweezers and
removed. Some dexterity was required to snare the larvae before
their retreat to the safety of their subcutaneous lair." The
article includes instructive color photos of this operation.

Reference: Timothy F. Brewer et al., "Bacon Therapy and
Furuncular Myiasis," _Journal of the American Medical
Association_, Nov 3, 1993;270:2087-2088.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

In response to David Haines posting on human bot flies in the
tropics I thought it worth the trouble to share my experience
with bot flies in Belize. I have taken students to Belize for
the past four years. Last year was the first time any of my
students came back with a bot. One student had one on her back
and another had two on his ankle. At times the students
experienced some discomfort when apparently the larva would
wriggle around. However, we did not consider the affliction
serious enough to warrant a visit to the doctor's office. I had
read about putting a piece of meat over the lesion and suggested
that to the students who tried it without success. The bot
larvae were removed by first suffocating the larvae with a
combination of fingernail polish covered with vaseline ( probably
overkill) and then squeezing the larvae out. They came out
intact and I have them preserved in vials. The student with two
botflies actually left one bot larvae in until it pupated which
took about 6-7 weeks. He was curious to see what would come of
it. The lesion grew huge but he experienced no ill effects. The
takehome message is: while the idea of a botfly larvae underneath
your skin might make you queezy, the reality is that it is not a
serious problem.
Joe Gubanyi
Concordia College
Seward NE

-----------------------------------------------------------

"Edible: Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a
toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a
man to a worm."- - Ambrose
Bierce
(The Devil's
Dictionary)

This talk of botfly larvae reminded me of a story I read in
"Tropical Nature" by Adrian Forsyth and Ken Miyata. It seems that
a graduate biology student named Jerry who was working at
Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology found himself leaving
test tubes behind and gaining his first field experience at a
field course in tropical ecology in Costa Rica.
"A few weeks before Jerry was due to return to the
Museum, his head began to itch. This was hardly remarkable. Skin
fungus, chigger and mosquito bites, and a wealth of other
pruriginous rot are the lot of field biologists in the lowland
tropics, as he and his fellow students were by then well
aware.......At first, Jerry assumed that the itch on his scalp
was a mosquito bite, as indeed it was. But unlike the usual
mosquito bite, this one did not subside. It grew larger, forming
a small mound, and besides scratching, Jerry began to worry.
After several days of private fretting he sought help. One of his
fellow students, a medical entomologist, agreed to examine the
wound. Her diagnosis sent a chill of fear through poor Jerry.
Poking out of a tiny hole in his scalp was a wiggling insect
spiracle. A hideous little botfly maggot was living inside the
skin on his head and eating his flesh! This intimacy with nature
was a little too much for Jerry, and he ran around in circles
crying for the removal of the maggot."

Anyway, due to the absence of suitable surgical equipment
the larvae was not removed and by the time Jerry got back to New
England he had actually grown rather fond of his guest (you've
got to read this book!) and had abandoned thoughts of a medical
solution (yes, he had unsuccessfully tried the "slab of meat"
method), and decided to let nature take its course. "Sudden death
at the jaws of a large carnivore or the brief bite of a flea do
not provide one the opportunity to reflect on the transmutative
nature of predation and parasitism. But for the minor expense of
a few milligrams of flesh, Jerry could both contemplate and feel
the process at his leisure. He was inside a food chain, rather
than at its end. Jerry grew fond of his bot and the bot grew fat
on Jerry." "While sitting in the bleachers at Fenway Park
one evening watching the Red Sox fall prey to the Yankees, Jerry
felt the beginning of the end. Protruding from the goose egg atop
his scalp was a quarter inch of botfly larva. Over the course of
the evening this protrusion grew, and eventually the bristly,
inch-long larva fell free. Jerry prepared a glass jar with
sterilized sand to act as a nursery for his pupating bot, but
despite his tender ministrations the larva dried out and died
before it could encase itself in a pupal sheath."

Stu Tingley
Shediac Bridge, NB
Canada
cormiey at umoncton.ca

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Carol Roberts write...
>
> If I ever have that kind of encounter with a botfly, I'm just
gonna have to > kill myself, plain and simple. You know . . . my
head feels kind of itchy. >

Hear, hear Carol! I can't imagine what I'd do if I had such an
experience. I know the botfly maggot sounds innocuous, but I
still find myself holding my stomach just reading these acocunts
(yet I also find myself reading them with vigor-- sort of like
watching a horror movie, incredibly gross but you can't help but
watch). On the side, I'm also saving all those posts so I can
pass them around to co-workers.

Paul Pisano
McLean, VA
axu at nihcu (bitnet) axu at cu.nih.gov (internet)


--
**********************

david c. haines
mathematics
bates college
lewiston, maine
dhaines at abacus.bates.edu

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 12:14:33 -0400
From: William Micha Klein <klein at BRAHMS.UDEL.EDU>
Subject: More on Botfly

I have found the recent posting on Human Botfly infestation morbidly
interesting. I think that I may have missed some earlier posts because I
only received the one message with the botfly thread. Being an entomology
graduate student, I find myself engaging in *weird* late-night chats with
fellow grads and profs. Apparently a real Human Botfly adult(as opposed
to the ugly flesh-eating larvae in the bot)is hard to come by and is quite
a trophy for an entomology collection--kind of like seeing Bachman's warbler.
Anyway, one of the professors--a medical entomologist--was telling some
tropical horror stories(graduate students dying from the very disease they
came to study, horrible hospital conditions that infected injured students,
etc.). She told us of one of her fellow graduate students who became
infested with a human botfly. He felt that this was an opportunity that he
could not pass up so he kept it; let it feed and grow and generally nurtured
this maggot. While the maggot can be quite painful at times, apparently
it's "the type of pain you forget"(like anyone wants to give birth to a
fly). While the other students thought he was a real sick pup, he kept
up with it so he could capture the newly emerged adult, kill it and add this
hard won trophy to his collection. Well, he misjudged the timing of the
emergence and while asleep one night, the little bugger emerged. He must
have been one deep sleeper! So all of his hard work was for nothing--the
ungrateful maggot fed and left him with a nasty scar on his shoulder where
it had been and nothing else.
While I admire his determination and will power, I also think that he
was a kook! Apparently this strange practice is not uncommon among some
entomologists. The same medical entomologist also told us some stories about
how researchers sneek foreign insects into the U.S. This is highly illegal
and I found the lack of respect for these necessary laws sad(Gypsy moth
just waiting to happen). While dead specimens are fairly easy to bring into
the U.S. legally, live specimens are regulated to the hilt(and with good
reason). While some scientists used hidden compartments, flase bottoms, etc.
in their luggage, there are cases where they use their own bodies.
Parasitologists have been known to infest themselves in the foreign country
then come back to the U.S. and safely remove the parasite--apparently customs
doesn't particularly mind you carrying contraband life-forms internally(or
at least they have a hard time catching you). While some may consider this
sick, others believe that the ends justify the means. Soapbox--I think that
aside from the morbid nature of this paractice there are serious environmental
implications to consider(Headline--"Rare parasite kills thousands in New York"
soapbox off.
I see that I have taken up enough time on birdchat with non-bird talk.
So I'll end with a quick bird sighting. Here at the University of Delaware
there are lots of GLOSSY IBIS on the ag. farms. They are very approachable
and any bird photographers interested in getting some great shots of the
ibis may want to consider a trip here. You may want to hold on to your
regular short lenses because you may find the telephoto overkill. I'm
sure that a good 300mm telephoto would be fantastic for VERY close-up shots
of the ibis.
Also, I'll be in Cape May this Saturday(May 14th). I was down two
weeks ago and had a good time. I'll be watching BIRDEAST for the latest
hot birds. Any other fellow chatters going to Cape May this weekend?

Good Birding,
William Klein
Univ. of Del.
klein at bach.udel.edu

------------------------------