SPEAKERS
SERIES
The Fantastical Lives of Hummingbirds
A Virtual Presentation with Local Researcher Alyssa Sargent
Date: Thursday, September 10th
Time: 6PM to 7PM
Location: Online via Zoom
Presentation Fee: Pay what you can: $5, $10, or $15
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. While pursuing her PhD, Alyssa studied hummingbirds in Colombia using "on-board" devices, which are equipped to the birds themselves. These tiny electronics allow researchers to map where individual hummingbirds disappear to, how active they really are, and how thick the competition can get at a given feeder. When the pressure is on, and the nectar is scarce, who comes out on top? Come take a peek, up close, at the swashbuckling lives of the world's smallest birds!
About Alyssa Sargent
Alyssa J. Sargent is a PhD candidate and former National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Washington, where she's a part of the Behavioral Ecophysics Lab. In her current work, she studies the swashbuckling, drama-packed lives of hummingbirds in Colombia. Alyssa loves to come up with creative ways to share her research with people—including a bilingual board game, “Hummingbird Sugar Rush” (“Fiebre de Azúcar en Colibríes”)—to teach people about the decisions hummingbirds must make every day. Throughout her career, she's studied birds in Australia, Portugal, Ecuador, Canada, Puerto Rico, and numerous states.
