{"id":185,"date":"2012-08-03T00:36:29","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T00:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backyardsfornature.org\/?p=185"},"modified":"2012-08-03T00:36:29","modified_gmt":"2012-08-03T00:36:29","slug":"my-hummingbirds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/backyardsfornature.org\/?p=185","title":{"rendered":"My Hummingbirds"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Edie Parnum<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I watch my Ruby-throated Hummingbirds obsessively.\u00a0 Beginning in early May flashes of iridescent green zip around my yard.\u00a0 These tiny sprites hover, fly straight up, down, and even backwards. When the light is just so, I can glimpse the male\u2019s dazzling red gorget.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen that red innumerable times, but I\u2019m always mesmerized.<\/p>\n

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Male Ruby-throated Hummingbird displaying gorget. Photo courtesy of public-domain-image.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

When I hear a zippety-tzit sound, I know that my territorial male is chasing another hummer away from the flowers or feeders. My male often watches for competitors from his favorite perch, usually a small, but conspicuous, horizontal branch.\u00a0 Like other hummers, he uses a perch to watch for tiny flying insects (an important source of protein), then snags them in mid-air.\u00a0 On occasion I\u2019ve seen the resident male dive up and down in a pendulum swing for the benefit of a female.<\/p>\n

I refer to them as \u201cmy\u201d hummingbirds, but they\u2019re not mine at all.\u00a0 True, they feed at my feeders, which I assiduously clean and fill with fresh sugar water every few days.\u00a0\u00a0 They visit the flowers I\u2019ve planted for them–Trumpet Honeysuckle, Trumpet Vine, Bee Balm, Cardinal Flower, Great Blue Lobelia, and Wild Columbine.\u00a0 Ruby-throats are not particularly shy, sometimes feeding or hovering just a few feet from me.\u00a0 Once, a hummer tried to get nectar from a pink flower on my shirt.\u00a0 Another time when one fed just a few feet in front of me, I could see its hyper-fast heart beats (1200 beats per minute while feeding). Nevertheless, most of their lives are unknown to me.<\/p>\n

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Female nectaring on Trumpet Honeysuckle<\/p><\/div>\n

Even though I watch intently, I catch only brief glimpses.\u00a0 Often one will zip behind the deck railing or some leaves, where my view is obscured. Or it simply vanishes.\u00a0 I try to count the number in my yard.\u00a0 I can usually spot two or three, but know that there are probably more during midsummer. \u00a0I\u2019ve never seen a pair mate.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never seen a female build a nest, incubate eggs, or feed nestlings in my yard.\u00a0 After all, they are wild creatures and don\u2019t live their lives for my amusement.\u00a0 They elude me.<\/p>\n

Soon my resident hummingbirds will be gone. Because the adult males take no part in raising the young, they start migrating in the latter part of July.\u00a0 The local females and young soon follow. During August and September the hummingbirds I see in my yard come from the north.\u00a0 I persist in thinking of these migrants as mine, too, since hummingbirds evidently use the same stop-over feeding areas year after year.<\/p>\n

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Female Ruby-throated Hummingbird<\/p><\/div>\n

Usually I don\u2019t see any hummers in my yard after the third week in September. \u00a0By then, I no longer have illusions of ownership. I won\u2019t see them on their non-stop 600-mile trip across the Gulf of Mexico.\u00a0 And only if I take an unexpected trip to southern Mexico or Central America will I see them during the winter months.\u00a0 More likely I\u2019ll be deprived of hummingbirds for seven months.\u00a0 However, I\u2019ll welcome my hummingbirds back to my yard next spring\u2014indeed, some will be the same birds.<\/p>\n

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For information\u00a0about how to attract hummingbirds to your yard and more fascinating facts about them,\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Edie Parnum I watch my Ruby-throated Hummingbirds obsessively.\u00a0 Beginning in early May flashes of iridescent green zip around my yard.\u00a0 These tiny sprites hover, fly straight up, down, and even backwards. When the light is just so, I can … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/backyardsfornature.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/backyardsfornature.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/backyardsfornature.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backyardsfornature.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backyardsfornature.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/backyardsfornature.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":210,"href":"https:\/\/backyardsfornature.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions\/210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/backyardsfornature.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backyardsfornature.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backyardsfornature.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}