How Do Hummingbirds Migrate?

Video Transcript

"Hello my name is Barbara Dewitt. I'm a National Wildlife Federation Stewart with The Broward County Audubon Society. Hummingbirds migrate because they're leaving the cooler weather where they were getting their food source and following the flowers and the rivers south to where it will be warmer for them. It's genetic and they don't need any queues from anyone or any signs to tell them to go, they just know and the one's that migrate here, the ruby throated hummingbird, are most common on the Eastern United States comes and migrates from as far up into Canada and New England all the way down here to Florida or it takes a little more westerly path and goes down over the gulf and into Mexico and Central America or even farther through Texas. There's several different routes it would take. There's not just one route like an airplane, but there's many routes for them and they leave the north in the September to come down here and then they leave again in March, I believe they're most of them are already gone now in March. And they'll be headed up to the places that they were last year and hummingbirds have a memory so they can go to the exactly the same garden they were last year and feed again and there can be pairs and they can mate and have their young and they know from one, one part in the north to one, one part in the south or one garden in the south and they tag hummingbirds so that's how they know if it's exactly the same hummingbird that's going to exactly the same garden."