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Valrico Man Is Hummingbird Lover

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By YVETTE C. HAMMETT

yhammett@tampatrib.com

Published: February 4, 2009

VALRICO - Steve Backes sits patiently on his covered porch, waiting for the twittering to begin.

The man who gets paid to eat ice cream finds whimsy in his life outside the job also.

His yard off Durant Road is filled with pink, red and orange blossoming plants meant to attract the tiniest of fliers - hummingbirds.

And he's attracted plenty.

Since he and his wife, Debbie - and their now 9-year-old son, Benjamin - moved in to their house in 2001, he's worked to transform an otherwise plain yard into a secret garden filled with plants of varying sizes and more than a few hummingbird feeders.

"I've been birding most of my life," said Backes, who works in quality control at the Publix Super Markets dairy section. "At 8 years old, I got a puzzle with birds, and I started learning my birds."

As an adult, he went to a home in Lutz, where a rufous hummingbird showed up. He was hooked, he said.

Backes loves to watch the drama play out in his secret suburban garden. Dozens of hummingbirds making their way from northern climes, headed to Central America for winter, lay over in his yard amid the flowers and feeders.

Vocal battles break out among the hummingbirds, vying for their own spots in the yard. More than a dozen feeders help keep the peace.

Not only do his efforts aid these tiny treasures in their migration, they also will pay off in the future.

Scientists will use the information collected in Valrico and other yards across the Southeast to learn more about these miniature wonders - when and how they migrate, what they eat, how long they live.

On one recent day, he invited bird bander Fred Bassett to his yard to band the tiny, colorful birds.

Bassett, a member of the Hummer/Bird Study Group, travels the Southeast banding and studying hummers.

In his 15 years of banding, he has identified nine species of hummingbirds in Florida.

During Bassett's visit, Backes camped out on the porch with a small fishing reel connected to the door of a cage in which a hummingbird feeder was suspended.

As each bird flew in, Backes sprang the trap, and Bassett hurried to retrieve the bird.

With a few practiced moves, Bassett removed each tiny flier and hustled it to the tailgate of his truck. Tucked in the cut-out toe of a lady's stocking, he carefully placed each on a jewelers' scale - the kind used to weigh diamonds.

"It takes about 10 of these guys to make an ounce," Bassett said.

"Three grams, standard weight," he said after weighing a ruby-throated hummingbird.

He measures each one and searches for any markings that might help him identify the bird in years to come.

Meticulous records go into his log book. The records are later transferred to the National Bird Banding Laboratory in Laurel, Md. From there, they will be disseminated to biologists across the nation, who will use the information in their own hummingbird studies.

There was plenty to see during Bassett's visit. And there usually is this time of year. Backes has counted as many as 13 hummers in his yard in a given day during winter migration.

"In my yard, for seven months of the year over the past six years, I've had hummingbirds," Backes said.

He encourages others to take an active role in tracking these magnificent little birds.

"A lot of gardeners attract hummingbirds, but they don't necessarily know one from another," Backes said. The more they learn, the more they can aide the birds and enjoy the fruits of their labor, he said.

Backes' Web site lists information on the birds he spots in his yard. Go to mysite.verizon .net/resu64md/yardhummers.

Reporter Yvette C. Hammett can be reached at (813) 865-1566.

To view a video slideshow about hummingbird banding by photojournalist Jim Reed, go to Brandon.TBO .com, Keyword: Hummingbird.

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