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.

Birds vs Glass

Nature runs on its own clock, its own calendar.

It doesn't care what we humans come up with.   

Nature is now saying "fall is here" with purple asters...

...and white.

It's the last burst of the wildflowers I love to photograph.

Nature is also calling birds home.

Right now, fall bird migration is in progress. Did you know there is an Internet tool to help track bird migrations?  It's called BirdCast.  Tonight and tomorrow night, BirdCast predicts high migration levels in our area, about 150 miles from New York City.

Trigger alert: If you have a weak stomach, you may not want to click on the next link.

In cities such as New York City, however, another tragic fall is unfolding, as hundreds of dead migratory birds have been picked up in recent mornings.  226 just around the World Trade Center's Freedom tower - that beautiful tower that replaced buildings destroyed in the September 11 attacks.

Tuesday was a bad morning, especially.

Birds can't tell glass reflections from natural scenery.  Actually we humans can't, either, but we learn, at early ages, various cues that tell us nope, don't collide with that.

Birds don't get that education.  The cues that work for us, additionally, don't work for them.  So, it is estimated that possibly as many as one billion (no, that isn't a typo) birds die in collisions with human structures each year. (this link is safe to click on, and it contains fascinating information).

Hundreds of thousands of birds are migrating in North America right now and many will not make it to their destination.  

One thing I never realized until this year is that many of the summer birds we enjoy where I live in the Southern Tier of New York iare actually southern birds who summer here (like reverse snowbirds).  They come around April and May, and leave in September and October, heading back to the places they live in much of the year.  They aren't "our" birds.  In fact, some 40% of birds migrate - some short distances, some thousands of miles.

They come to our northern lands to breed, and our hearts are gladdened by their presence. But now Nature is calling them home.

Around 80% of them migrate at night.  The moon and stars guide them.  They don't have daytime thermals to deal with. Cooler temperatures help dispel the extra body heat of long distance flying.  I never realized that some of the night sounds aren't crickets, but, possibly, birds communicating with their fellow flyers.

The nighttime is busy and full of birds.

That's where turning off lights in city office buildings come in.   They won't be distracted by the light of artificial structures, and won't be drawn in to their doom.  But this solution isn't implemented often enough.  Here's one effort:  Lights out Philly.

Structures can also be designed to be less harmful to birds.  

For daytime collisions, there are other solutions, ones that homeowners (like me) should consider, because birds also collide with the windows of our homes.  I used to think "well, I don't see dead birds here in my yard, so why should I worry?" Turns out I'm wrong. 

I'm only starting my own birding journey, and I still have so much to learn.

One may ask, why should we care about some birds dying, when so many humans are suffering right now?  It's a good question.

But we depend on birds for so much - pollination, eating insects that hurt our survival, joyous song, and yes - the needed work of scavenging.  Let's not forget the billions of domestic birds that are direct members of our food chain, too (with apologies to my vegan and vegetarian readers.)

Birds need us.

But perhaps, even more, we need birds.