Classroom Projects -- Butterfly Gardens

Curriculum Connections
Territorial Tactics

Overview: Territorial Tactics is an energetic tag game in which students simulate the territorial behavior and survival strategies of hummingbirds. It is designed to teach students tactics used by dominant territorial hummingbirds to guard a feeder or patch of nectar plants, and tactics used by other hummingbirds to try to feed from that protected food source. (The game is like Capture the Flag with a few adaptations.)

Subject areas: science, physical education

Key concepts: behavioral adaptations, intra-species competition

Skills: teamwork, problem solving, physical fitness (movement)

Location: outdoors

Estimated time: 20 to 30 minutes

Materials: a rope 20 feet (6 meters) long or large hoop 5 feet (1.5 meters) in diameter; boundary markers (e.g., rope or traffic cones); at least 5 food tokens (e.g., red poker chips, red cutouts from laminated paper or foam place mats, or other small objects) per student

Preparation: Near the center of a wide flat outdoor area, lay down a hoop or rope to form a circle about 5 feet (1.5 meters) in diameter that will represent the food source. Place the food tokens inside this circle. Place boundary markers 50 to 100 feet (15 to 30 meters) away from the food source.

Procedure

Choose one student to play the role of the territorial hummingbird who guards the food source by tagging competitors.
The rest of the students are competing hummingbirds who try to grab one food token at a time (no handfuls) without stepping inside of the food circle and without being tagged by the dominant hummingbird. (The food circle is large enough that students won’t bump heads as they lean in to grab food tokens, but remind them to be careful.)
Students who are tagged must give up one food token, go outside the territorial boundary, and count to 30 before returning inside the boundary. (This represents a competitor being chased away from the feeder or flower.)
The first player to collect five tokens shouts “Territory Turnover” to signal that this round is over. All of the players return their food tokens to the circle. The winner becomes the dominant hummingbird in the next round.

Wrap-up: Ask students to explain the strategies and tactics they used to protect or obtain food. One strategy used by territorial hummingbirds, which students may also use, is to stay very close to the food source. A tactic used by competing birds is “strength in numbers." If many birds feed at once, the dominant bird has a harder time fighting them off. What other tactics did they use? Do hummingbirds also use these? In nature, do flowers produce a continuous and endless supply of nectar? How might territorial behavior help hummingbirds survive?

Adaptations

Play the first round with only one competing hummingbird, and then play with five, then with ten; keep increasing the number of competing birds each round. (This increase in competition happens in nature during peak migration periods and toward the end of the breeding season when young birds become mature enough to feed at flowers and feeders.) Ask students how their tactics differ or change.
After a few rounds, require competing birds to return to the boundary after picking up each token. This will reduce the number of birds feeding at the same time and can be a useful trick for playing the game with larger classes. Ask students how their tactics differ or change.
After a few rounds, add a second feeding area some distance from the original. (People who wish to accommodate more hummingbirds hang a second feeder out of sight of the dominant bird. It is much harder a for dominant bird to defend two feeders, and often a second dominant bird will claim the other feeder.)

Extension: After playing the game, observe the behavior of hummingbirds at a feeder or patch of flowers. What behaviors do students recognize from the game? If you cannot observe live hummingbirds feeding, several videos are available that include footage of feeding behavior (e.g., Dances with Hummingbirds, 1995, Nature Science Network, Inc., 61 min.; Watching Hummingbirds, 1998, Nature Science Network, Inc., 33 min.).

This activity, written by Kim Bailey, was originally published in Green Teacher magazine (Spring 2002) and is also included in Green Teacher’s book, Teaching Green: The Middle Years.