A new wrinkle on an old myth (1 Viewer)

[Tz'unun]

"Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
--The White Queen, Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

At a speaking engagement yesterday in central Arizona, a member of the audience asked me to comment on his neighbor's claim that hummingbirds migrate on the backs of geese... to the Sonoran Desert! I said, "When's the last time you saw a flock of geese in the desert?" (That hokey staged scene in Winged Migration doesn't count, of course.) "Well, that's what I thought," he said, sounding relieved to verify that his BS detector was in good working order. I'm glad he asked, because some version of this myth was bound to be rolling around in the brains of other people in the audience, and this new twist offered the perfect setup to discuss the vastly different whens and wheres of hummingbird and waterfowl migration.

 

[humminbird]

Hey Sheri:
My usual response to that one (which I get about twice each year somewhere in Texas) starts with "actually, if you look really close, those little hummingbirds are hanging on real tight to those geese, and their wings are going like crazy as they carry those geese across the Gulf...". I then go on to point out that hummingbirds are long since in Mexico when the first geese begin to arrive on the Texas coast!

Mark

 

[Lisa W]

Sheri,
I'd never heard that one before, maybe the ones who get here really early also catch a ride up north on the Sandhill Cranes when they leave. :-O

 

[Chris D]

This May I watched a Western Kingbird firmly grasping and riding on the back of a Raven. It was pecking at the back of it's head as hard as it could. Ravens nab their chicks here. Amazing to see.