Stop and Go

Hummingbird migration is a stop and go journey. As hummers travel south, they must find places to rest and refuel along the way. Is your yard a valuable stopover site for hungry hummers?

Doubling Their Weight

Hummingbirds may be tiny, but they are big eaters. No animal on earth has a faster metabolism. These birds burn food so fast they often eat 1.5 to 3 times their body weight in food per day.

 

Earlier this year, Journey North program coordinator, Nancy Sheehan, worked with the FieldScope/BSCS Science Learning team to bring data on milkweed, monarch, and hummingbird tracking and monitoring into a newly launched FieldScope project. Data from Journey North’s Hummingbird and Monarch & Milkweed Projects are now available from 1994–2020.

Dear Journey North members,

By now you have probably heard  that the forest area occupied by monarch in Mexico was down from last year, to 2.83 hectares (WWF- Mexico and the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas (CONANP)). In summary, the area occupied by monarch butterflies represented a 53% decrease from last year. The 2.83 ha include 11 monarch butterfly colonies measured in late December 2019, three in Michoacan and eight in the State of Mexico. Most of the area occupied (2.46 hectares) was located within the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve.

 

January 30, 2019

Scientists cheered today at a press conference in Mexico City when this year’s official monarch population estimate was announced.

The clustering butterflies cover 14.9 acres (6.05 hectares) of forest, the highest recorded since 2006 and an increase of 144% from last winter.

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