Olympic Birdfest

Friday, April 11, 2025 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Location: Dungeness River Nature Center – Rainshadow Hall

Price: $20.00

Presenter: Alyssa Sargent

 

What does a day in the life of a hummingbird entail? Where do they travel, and which rival is worth attacking? Does it pay off to stay near home, saving energy for inevitable battle, or to fly further afield—facing new perils—to find food? Cutting-edge technologies can help us to answer these questions. In my PhD, I study hummingbirds in Colombia using “on-board” devices, which we equip to the birds themselves; these tiny electronics allow us to map where individual hummingbirds disappear to, how active they really are, and how thick the competition can get at a given feeder. Come join me and take a peek, up close, at the swashbuckling lives of the world’s smallest birds!

 

Bio: Alyssa J. Sargent is a PhD candidate at the University of Washington, where she’s a part of the Behavioral Ecophysics Lab. In her current work, she studies hummingbird movement and behavior in Colombia, where she works with a wonderful field crew at Centro de Investigación Colibrí Gorriazul. Alyssa loves to come up with creative ways to share her research with people, and is even working on a board game, “Hummingbird Sugar Rush,” to teach people about the decisions hummingbirds must make every day. Before starting her PhD, she also studied fairywrens in Australia, owls in Canada, storm petrels in the Azores, Kirtland’s Warblers in Michigan, hummingbirds in Arizona, and songbirds in Missouri.