Happy 5400th (Post)

Yes, this is my 5,400th post.  It took from my start in 2009 until now to get here, and what a journey its been.  I thank those who have been along for all or part of it.

Here's a snapshot of my latest journey - sitting outside on my days off and enjoying the birds.

A female ruby throated hummingbird decided to celebrate with me a day early.  Our backyard has several plantings to attract hummingbirds, but we've only seen them a handful of times this summer.  In fact, my spouse finally took down the hummingbird feeder.

But yesterday, a hummer showed up twice.  Not only that, but it let me take its picture several times, while she showed off her mid air agility. 

She seems to be asking "which pose do you like best?"

On the left side, suspended in midair?

From the back?

Feeding?

Or just wondering which flower she will feed from next?

Truthfully, little bird, I liked them all.

So, do I have any thoughts about my 5,400th post?  I sure do.

I couldn't do these past 5,399 posts without the loyal readership of YOU, my reader, and I thank you once again for making my blogging journey so enjoyable.

Why not join me tomorrow, when I join other skywatchers in watching the sky?

Received - One Hummingbird

I was literally writing a post that started "Please, hummingbirds.  Please stop your boycott of my yard.  

We don't know what we did wrong.  We miss you.  Please forgive us if we did something wrong.  We miss you.

We lovingly prepared our yard for you.  

Cupheas in their customary pot are blooming strongly.  The fuschias await you.  We have other delights.  Where are you, though?  You should have been here by now. We are worried."

The hummers normally show up the first week in May.  We had our feeder out around May 3.  A woman in our area had seen them already on Mother's Day.  Nada for us.  

So I started to blog this post outside on my laptop as a last resort.

No kidding, as I was typing these words, I heard a sound - a familiar sound.  A sound of wings.

A female ruby-throated hummingbird was visiting my cupheas. (Sorry for the blurriness in these photos).

Hummingbird, don't fly away fly away, I mentally begged as I wrestled my iPhone out of my pocket.  I didn't want to scare it off.

I didn't scare it, surprisingly.

This is our fourth year feeding the birds.  I admire hummingbirds, these tiny jewels of the sky, so.  They bring so much joy to me, not that I don't like the Northern Cardinals, house finches, hairy and downy woodpeckers, and others that visit our feeders. (Even - ahem - the common grackles and European starlings. Well, maybe not so much, but they have their place in our ecology.)

I was starting to lose faith.

But now, received - one hummingbird.

Thank you.

Please come back again soon.

Hummingbird #WordlessWednesday

 Today, I'm taking a break from words and letting a neighborhood hummingbird do the talking (so to speak)

This is a female ruby-throated hummer.  These are the only hummingbirds that live in the Northeast United States.

From the back.
 

She is feeding on cuphea flowers, one of their favorites. She is (if you subtract the long, thin beak visible here) not much bigger than my index finger.

I was inches from her.   I saw her entering my back yard while I was outside blogging and had enough time to get my iPhone 13 mini out and trained on the cuphea.  

 

Their wings beat up to 70 beats a second.  Yes, a second.  They can also fly backwards.  I call them little miracles.  Here, Ms. Hummer poses in the upper right of the photo, hovering.

Thank you for visiting!

Joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for her #WordlessWednesday.

My Hummingbird Friend

I'm going to miss her, the female ruby-throated hummingbird whose territory I live in.

These past few months,she's permitted me to sit in the back yard, in the chair my back likes the best.  She won't use the sugar water feeder we've set up for her when I'm sitting in the yard, but she will work the nearby flowers.  And, she'll fly right into my face (well, maybe a couple of feet away) and chirp at me while hovering, her wings beating at some 50 times a second  (this is not a typo).

I've never tried to get her to feed from my hand.  Our late Wild Birds Unlimited store (it closed Tuesday with the owners retiring after over a year of trying to find a buyer) used to sell these little hummingbird hand feeders.  Her companionship was good enough.

When I heard the buzz of her wings, my breath always caught.

Right now, there are turtleheads (a wildflower that I bought from a wildflower grower in Asheville, North Carolina 10 years ago), a heuchera I let bloom, cuphea,    The cuphea is inches from me and she would feed right from the flowers.  If I dared to take her picture on the cuphea she would leave, insulted.

She's in the upper right - cuphea are the orange flowers

 

That's why I treasure the few pictures I have of her, blurry or not.

If you are unfamiliar with hummingbirds (and, living east of the Mississippi, ruby-throateds are the only ones I can identify firsthand), you'll know this friendship is temporary.  I knew it, though, coming in.

Blurry hummingbird - background tree is a pawpaw

I think she left us Sunday.  Bon voyage, if so.

In the last two weeks, we suddenly seemed to be seeing her a lot more than usual.  Besides visiting the flowers, she would take long, quenching sips of sugar water. And she seemed to be doing a lot of resting on a nearby clothesline, one I haven't used for drying clothes for years but kept up anyway.  

I knew what she is doing.  She was preparing for fall migration.  Unlike most of "our" (well, we just host them; they don't belong to us) feeder birds, who are year round residents (Northern cardinals, house finches, gold finches, chickadees, tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, downy/hairy woodpeckers, blue jays, and red-bellied woodpeckers) and the mourning doves who feed on the seeds other birds shovel out of the feeders, the hummingbirds come here to summer and to breed.  And then, come the early part of September, they are on their way to Florida, Louisiana and, eventually, Mexico.

These little bundles of boundless energy have to gain up to 40% of their weight to enable this miraculous journey.

Now, it's early September.  She didn't come to the feeder or flowers Sunday, at least where we could see her.  Ditto for Monday.

Perhaps she is gone.  Just like that.  No goodbye.

We'll keep the feeder going another week or so, just in case any migrants from further north want to stop by.  Our flowers will also be there to welcome them. 

And, to my blogging friends in Texas I ask, take good care of my friend when she arrives. 

Looking to the future?

I know you will.

Hummingbird on Clothesline #WordlessWednesday

I was sitting in the backyard near this hummingbird's favorite flower container when she (a female ruby throated hummingbird) came by.

She made kissing sounds at me - no, it wasn't the buzzing sound her wings make. Rather, it was a quick series of chirps.  Maybe it was a greeting, but I don't think so.  This hummer does not go to our feeder when I am in the yard.

Instead, she flew to a nearby clothesline.

I slowly lifted my iPhone while she sat there looking at me.  To my amazement she let me take her picture.

Joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for her #WordlessWednesday.

The Bird Show

I think birds know when you are carrying a recording device. If I don't have my iPhone, all types of photo-worthy antics ensue.  If I have my iPhone, nothing.  Nada.

Yesterday afternoon, it was gorgeous, and after work, I sat in my backyard with my laptop and without my iPhone (which is also my camera).

So, what did I miss and what can't I show you?

First up were the hummingbirds. Since I am in New York State, they are ruby-throated hummingbirds.  Originally we had only one, a female.  We now are fairly certain we have three.  All look like females but I understand all juveniles look mainly the same as adult females.

 I have two hanging baskets and a planter with  and miscellaneous perennials that attract hummingbirds.  We've also had (first year feeding the birds) a window mounted hummingbird feeder on our dining room window.   

Here are some hummingbird pictures I've taken from that window.   These were both taken July 26.

The pause that refreshed, middle of photo, wings flapping so they are blurred

Note there is only one hummingbird in each pictures and that is because hummingbirds are extremely territorial.  They do not share.  If two come at the same time, one will be driven away.

In our yard, also, is a clothesline we no longer use, but have kept up. It's a few feet away from the feeder and the two hanging baskets.  And then there is me, sitting.  Our yard is small.

So of course, while I sit with my laptop, two hummingbirds drop by - again and again. I suspect they have gotten used to me but this is the first time they haven't seemed to mind my presence.  I'm sure it's because I don't have that weird box I hold in my hand from time to time.

At one point both sat on the clothesline, just a few inches from each other.  Were they, perhaps, siblings? I've read that hummingbirds spend much of their time perching to look for danger. But these were so close to each other.  They love that clothesline.

But no sibling love here.  One then tried to feed on a flower and was driven away by the other.

Another time, one was perhaps a foot away from my face, feeding on cuphea, an annual they love, and chirped at me while I held my breath. 

Cuphea without hummingbird

A hummingbird chirp sounds a lot like a kissy-kissy sound.  But I know I couldn't have photographed it.  I do want to maintain this trust they are starting to show.

Taken July 27, this shows the clothesline and the two feeders, and lots of house finches

We also have a yellow bag feeder (beloved by goldfinches, but they have plenty of wild food this time of year and don't appear much) and a squirrel proof feeder where we offer safflower seeds.  We are visited by cardinals, chickadees and house finches.  Lots and lots of house finches.

Since I didn't have my cameras, two chickadees got into a fight.  The female cardinal, rarely seen recently, (the male visits more frequently - in the spring they came together) feasted at the feeder. No camera to capture that.

Oh well. 

It was so fun to watch the bird show.  I'm a little surprised to see hummers checking out an orange geranium flower and some of our purple hostas, in addition to the fuchsias.  They did it again today, because I had no way to show you.

Seems red in the photo, but this geranium flower is orange

As I started to write this last paragraph, another hummer flew into our small yard.

OK, birds, I get the message.  Next time I bring my phone with me! 

The bird show.  Sponsored by Nature.  There for our enjoyment.

Hummingbird at Feeder #WordlessWednesday

 It's so hard to capture a hummingbird's picture with an iPhone SE first edition, but when I saw "our" hummer feeding on our backyard fuschia basket, I aimed the phone in advance, hoping the hummer would also sip at our feeder.

She did.

I finally got a good picture of her!  I didn't want to crop the pictures any more than this, so I hope you can see her clearly in the upper part of the photo, just right of center.  These pictures won't win me any awards, but I was so happy at how they came out.

I love how she feeds.  Takes sips, rises up, comes back down, takes more sips.  Right after this photo was taken, she headed for one more flower (not in picture) and then zipped out of our yard.

Joining Sandee of Comedy Plus for #WordlessWednesday.

The Hummingbird

Magic.

Several minutes after I took a picture of columbines in my yard, I settled down in my yard with my laptop and started to blog.

A few minutes had passed when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye.

It was a hummingbird, a female ruby throated hummer (the only type of hummingbird found where I live in upstate New York).  But I had brought my phone (my camera) inside.  I was camera less! 

Sensing my non-ability to take its picture, the hummer visited several of my columbines, feeding just a few feet away from me, her long beak fitting the red-purple flowers so well.  I could almost see her swallow, as she hovered and picked out her next flower to feed on.  Her white belly was visible, as was a small line of glowing greenish feathers on her back.

But she wasn't through with her show.

She flew to a sapling on the edge of my yard, one apparently killed by the winter weather, a few feet away from me.  I could see her clearly as she perched on the sapling's thin branches. She settled down and started to preen herself with that long, thin beak.

She scratched herself with her foot, bringing it up past her wing to her head in a rapid motion.

And while all that happened, I watched, transfixed.

Then she flew up into a tree, hovering, not landing.  She returned to the sapling, perched, and then did feeding round two on the flowers.  I didn't dare move.  The bird fed and left.

Finally, my spouse came into our back yard.  I said, you have to wait, look what's going to happen! And of course, the bird never returned.

I went online and found out some facts about hummingbirds.  Apparently, they spend about 80% of their lives perched - the hovering in midair that they are famous for is energy intensive, and they can only do that for a few minutes at a time.

And they preen just as I saw "my" little hummingbird do.

I haven't seen many hummingbirds in my life.  This one, I'll never forget.