Bird watcher and hummingbird expert Bill Hilton Jr. demonstrated the trapping and banding of the tiny birds at the Mountain Lake Migratory Bird Festival in Giles County on Saturday.

One those birds, a female ruby throated hummingbird, was weighed, measured and banded for the third time in the past three years at the festival after being trapped in a special cage mechanism.

Hummingbirds migrate to South America where they spend the winter and can live to be 9 years old. Bird banding is one of the most important tools in ornithological research. When a bird is banded, the bander collects data about the bird's age, sex, condition, and plumage characteristics, and may make any number of measurements, especially the wing length, tail length, mass, and bill length.

Hilton is the executive director of the Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History in York, S.C., and the featured speaker of the migratory bird festival held at Mountain Lake resort. He says the mission of his organization is to "conserve animals, plants, habitats, and other natural components of the Piedmont Region of the eastern United States through observation, scientific study, and education for students of all ages."