hummingbird love!

so this is the black-chinned hummingbird (male pictured) which is quite skilled at hovering over flowers, and fairs well using exploitation competition, which means it can exploit more types of flower resources spread out over a wide area.



this is the broad-tailed hummingbird (male also pictured here). this bird is aggressive and defends territories around quality food resources, has excellent maneuverability, but is not as good at hovering and better exploits flowers that are clumped together in a small area. this is called interference competition.


both these birds eat the same kinds of food, just like most hummingbirds, but having direct competition for those resources has led them to specialize in flower distribution. obviously competition influences the abundance and densities of these species, and quite a bit of background data have been collected for them. this summer we'll be doing vegetation surveys which involve setting up transects (250m x 10m), identifying food flower species, counting flowers, and matching flower abundance with NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) maps. we're trying to find how these flowers are distributed, and we'll try to do two pixels (which are 250m x 250m, from the NDVI) each day.

this is an awfully ambitious attempt, by the way, because it spans not only into one state or one forest, but into four states and about a dozen forests in the southwest.

i have yet to read all the literature richard feldman has sent me on the dynamics of these species ranges, but i'm a bit shell-shocked as i look around and see a million things to pack, clean, read, study, donate, recycle, trash, or sell. mainly i would like to study for my GRE subject exam, which is just over a week away. if i don't start soon i'll be shooting myself in the foot, so to speak.

but all in good time, i suppose.