Hummer Junkies

We live near the artistic homestead of John J. Audubon, famed bird and wildlife illustrator, located in a town cleverly named Audubon, PA. I bought some beautiful note cards with his illustrations of hummingbirds: two caught in mid-hover, green and red, delicate and dignified, their long, elegant beaks carefully inserted into slender pink blossoms.

Our resident ruby-throated hummingbirds are nothing of the sort. They spend more time chasing each around our deck, over our heads, and off into space than actually feeding. There are two females that return every spring, and this year we have also seen a smaller male - but he has been scarce, and one can only imagine why. The two females spend most of their time racing around, zipping in and out like Warner Brothers cartoons, in circles, up and down, with sudden sideways left turns, using the most impressive helicopter-like maneuvers to evade and chase each other away from our flowers and sugar-water feeder. When they are not competing for our outdoor buffet, they are hanging out on tree branches nearby watching for each other. They persist with these activities in the middle of thunder storms, in the hot humidity of our summer afternoons, and at dusk when we are sitting outside trying to eat our dinner. If we are not expecting it - like when we are looking down at our plates of zucchini and rice to scoop up another forkful - the sudden zooming by of a 3 to 4 inch creature whose wings are beating at 53 times per second – well, the sound can be quite startling. It’s a sound that the primitive-warning parts of our brains don’t quite recognize, and it's a bit nerve-racking every time. But we love watching them, and so we’ll continue to put out the juice that I suspect got them hooked in the first place.*

One day in the late summer, they’ll disappear. The only thing I wonder is: Where exactly do our dinner companions go every fall? The University of Maine Extension web site says that most ruby-throated hummingbirds fly nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico, almost 600 miles, to their winter habitat in southern Mexico or Central America. I would love to know in which country they spend those months. Which lush, green rainforest do they hover in down there? Is it mountainous? Foggy and cool? Hot and sunny? I would love to affix a tiny H-bird-cam on their tiny heads, to see how they make the 1500-some-mile journey, and then how they make it back to our deck in Southeastern Pennsylvania each spring. How do they do it?

* For feeder solution, add one part table sugar to four parts boiling water, stir to dissolve the sugar. Boil for at least a minute. Cool before filling feeders. Keep feeder clean and sterilized. You should also have the long, tubular, red, purple, or pink flowers they like – as the flower nectar provides nutrition the sugar water doesn’t have. They need it for the long trip.

There are actually three in this video, recorded through a window (if you can catch them!) ...