A Real Hum Dinger

 

We were running a little behind this year.  Usually, by early April we are all prepared for our visitors.  Of course, with the unseasonably cold, wet spring we’ve been experiencing, our friends are probably running a little behind too.  Still, we needed to get ready because, if they come by and we’re not set up, they might not stay, whereas, if we make them feel welcome, they’ll stay all summer.

Unlike most visitors, we never get tired of hosting them.

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I may have been a little misleading when I said they may be running a little behind.  I’m not sure if they can even run at all, but they can fly like nobody’s business.

I’m talking about our friends, the hummingbirds.

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Almost every Sunday morning when the migratory birds are around and the weather permits, Annie and I will take our cups of hot Java out on the front porch and find our places either on our porch swing or into the rocking chairs.  It’s usually not long at all before our friends are comfortable with our presence and zip in to visit one of the feeders we have spaced out along the railing.

Although there are many species of hummers, even a few that live in our state, the most common visitors to the feeders on our front porch are the famous ruby throated hummingbird.  Its green head with a shiny-red throat patch made it a favorite of poet Emily Dickinson.  She wrote of our speedy friend:

 

Within my garden

Glides a Bird

Upon a single wheel

Whose spokes a

Dizzy music makes

As ‘twere a

Traveling Mill.

Emily Dickinson

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At only three inches long and weighing about the same as a dime, one might easily underestimate the critter but, when they are flying, which they are almost always doing when we see them, they can dazzle us with their skill.  Hummingbirds can fly forward, backwards, sideways, even upside down (when fighting or evading an enemy).  They are the only bird known to beat their wings fast enough (about 75 times per second!) that they can hover without the aid of a headwind.

Even when they are hovering, their wings are moving so fast that they are nearly invisible to the human eye, but they are audible.  That’s where the hum comes from and not because they don’t know the words.

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The birds are so territorial that they’ll spend more time chasing each other away from the feeders than they do eating.  It seems if they could just get along, they’d soon be full and ready to go off for a nap.  Maybe that’s why I’m fat and they’re not.  Hmmm.

Maybe they are just jittery because of their diet, which consists of pretty much just sugar and water.  While their natural diet of nectar may contain other vitamins and minerals, and they eat some bugs, sugar is pretty much what they live on.

Store-bought solutions for hummingbird feeders contain red food dye, but that’s mostly to make humans think they are buying something too difficult to make at home.  Some argue that the dye is actually bad for the little birds but the jury is still out on that.  Anyway, it’s easy to make your own faux-nectar by mixing one part sugar to four parts water, then bring it to a gentle boil which kills germs that could make our little friends sick.  Let it cool and that’s it.  Poor it into your hummingbird feeder and hang it up.

Don’t worry about the sugar-water diet being unhealthy for them like it is for your kids, they’ll supplement the liquid feed with nectar and bugs.  Scientist tell us it’s fine to feed hummers man-made food.

Try not to let your feeders all run dry at the same time so the birds find they can depend on them for food.  Otherwise they may move on to other sources.

Other than our feeders, I’ve noticed that hummingbirds like to feed at plants with red or orange tubular flowers.  Gardeners can plant columbines, begonias, geraniums and snapdragons to give the little speeders more variety to their diets.

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Last year I was blessed with seeing something I’ve only noticed twice in my life, spaced about 45 years apart.  I was watching one of our pint-sized pals, trying to figure out the best place to get a photo, when one of the lady hummers perched on a tiny branch.  A few inches from her, resembling a half walnut shell, was a nest.

Hummingbirds build their nests on tree branches of spider webbing, lichen and other plant material, and lined with plant down.  Appropriately their eggs are the smallest in the bird kingdom, but they are surprisingly large for such a small mama.  The ones I remember seeing when I was a teenager were about pea-size, if I recall correctly.

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After I started writing this post, Annie cleaned and filled our feeders and hung them up on the front porch.  Now we’re ready for our visitors to show up.

Yesterday, for the first time this year we grabbed that first cup of coffee and headed out onto the porch.  It wasn’t long until I heard it, that surprisingly deep hum that announced his presence.  A minute later, a little red throated wonder zoomed in to help himself to some sweet, sweet nectar.

Welcome back my little friend.

 

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(above) An interesting video about our little friends.

 

(below) A simple way to make your own hummingbird food.