10/12/2026
One week ago we tagged 10 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds in Cape May. All 10 have now left, and they didn't all take the same road.
Eight followed the coast:
Six left the same morning, October 6.
Most are now on stopovers in Georgia and Florida, heard at the same spots day after day near Augusta, Cordele and Daytona Beach.
The farthest is 787 miles from Cape May.
A Motus Terra station near Daytona Beach picked one of them up too.
Two went inland, including F37855:
October 10: left Cape May in the morning
1:10 PM: over the Blue Ridge, near Swift Run Gap (2,390 ft)
4:50 PM: over the Alleghenies into West Virginia, 325 miles from Cape May in one day
October 11: near Kingsport, Tennessee
None of the 57 hummingbirds we tagged in New Jersey last fall went through West Virginia.
Meanwhile, back in Cape May, Phoebe Lanzone is home from Rochester Institute of Technology for the long weekend. Phoebe is a trained hummingbird ba**er, and last fall she led the hummingbird project at the Cape May Point Arts and Science Center. On October 11, she and her dad, Mike Lanzone, also a certified ba**er, tagged two more at their home. We're lucky to still have hummingbirds around this late in the season. Both were in good shape, at 4.6 and 4.7 grams, and the bird in the final release dips as it flies away, a great sign it has plenty of fat stores for the journey ahead.
Last fall, the bird named for Phoebe made it to El Salvador. Maybe a good omen for these two late migrants? Be sure to follow us for updates in the days and weeks to come.
Every red dot in the video is a phone, tablet or computer with Bluetooth and location services turned on that heard one of the tags. The blue diamonds are Motus stations.
New Jersey HumTrack and the Lower Cape Stopover Project are a collaboration between Banding Coalition of the Americas, Cape May Point Arts and Science Center and Cellular Tracking Technologies, in partnership with Birds Canada and Wildlife Tracking System.