Hungry Hummers

Female Ruby-throated Hummingbird in the garden at HNWR, by Dick Malnory

The Turk’s Cap blooming in the garden adjacent to the Visitor Center at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge offers hungry Ruby-throated Hummingbirds an alternative to the nectar feeder there. During the warm weather season, the volunteers in the Visitor Center have the added job duty of making nectar and keeping all the feeders filled. Now the nectar consumption is increasing as we find 2 - 3, even  5 hummingbirds swarming the feeder rather than the usual one or two, a sign that their fall migration has begun.

Just keeping the hummingbird feeders available to the birds has been an ongoing struggle for the volunteers this year, as some critter, probably a raccoon has been regularly helping him/herself to the nectar, first pulling the feeder off the pole, then when deterred by a newly installed squirrel baffle, pushing the whole thing -  pole, feeder and all over onto the ground!  We tried bringing the feeders in at night, but then Refuge Manager Kathy Whaley suggested we try hanging a feeder from a beam outside the window.   So one was installed that way yesterday, thanks to Deputy Manager Paul Balkenbush, and hopefully, that problem is solved. Watch and learn!

The feeder is now suspended from an exterior beam of Visitor Center.

The hummingbirds we see are medium to long-distance migrants, according to Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  Most Ruby-throated Hummingbirds spend the winter in Central America, and most get there by flying across the Gulf of Mexico. Some birds stay in North America along the Gulf Coast, parts of the southern Atlantic coast, and at the tip of Florida; these are usually birds from farther north rather than birds that spent the summer there.

Here are some Hummingbirds Facts, from USFWS:

• Hummingbirds are found only in the Americas, which are home to more than 300 different hummingbird species. Most are found only in Central and South America, but Arizona is a hotbed of hummingbird variety, with many Central American species reaching the northern limits of their range there. One species, the rufous hummingbird, summers in southern Alaska.  (Texas Parks and Wildlife notes:  "[Of the] more than 300 species, only 18 are found regularly in the United States. Of these, 9 are common to Texas, and an additional 6 have made accidental appearances in the state.")
• Unique shoulder joints, wing bones, and musculature allow hummingbirds to hover and even fly backward. When hovering, their wings beat about 55 times per second. Inflight, that rises to 75 beats per second or more. Their wingspans range from about 2½ inches for the bumblebee hummingbird, a Central American species seen in Arizona, to 4½ inches for the ruby-throated hummingbird of the Eastern U.S.
• It takes a lot of energy to power all those wing beats.Hummingbirds weigh about a tenth of an ounce – about the same as a U.S. penny – and consume about half that amount of sugar, in the form of flower nectar, every day.
• Hummingbirds often conserve energy by going into a state of torpor on cool summer nights or during unseasonable cold spells. They become motionless, their bodies cold to the touch, but they’ll revive when temperatures rise.
• The Eastern United States’ only breeding hummingbird, the ruby-throated hummingbird, builds a nest the size of a walnut, lined with soft mosses and held together with spider webs. The female lays two pea-sized eggs and tends them alone. The males have multiple mates and begin their long migration to Central America in August, with the females following a few weeks later.

Here are some “Cool Facts” about the Ruby-throated from Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds:

• ·The extremely short legs of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird prevent it from walking or hopping, allowing it to only shuffle along a perch. However, it can scratch its head and neck by raising its foot up and over its wing.
• Like many birds, hummingbirds have good color vision and can see into the ultraviolet spectrum, which humans can’t see.
• The oldest known Ruby-throated Hummingbird was 9 years 1 month old.

Also from Cornell -  "Ruby-throated Hummingbirds feed on the nectar of red or orange tubular flowers such as trumpet creeper, cardinal flower, honeysuckle, jewelweed, bee-balm, red buckeye and red morning glory, as well as at hummingbird feeders and, sometimes, tree sap. Hummingbirds also catch insects in midair or pull them out of spider webs. Main insect prey includes mosquitoes, gnats, fruit flies, and small bees; also eats spiders. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds sometimes take insects attracted to sap wells or pick small caterpillars and aphids from leaves."

Photo by Bill Buchanan, USFWS

I recently read of a study by two researchers, Bradshaw and Schemske,  that reported finding that the hummer chooses red flowers because the red ones are invisible to bees and therefore can potentially offer more nectar than flowers of other colors.

Youngsters ages 4 - 12 will have the opportunity to "Hobnob with Hummingbirds" when The Refuge Rocks at Hagerman, Saturday, September 16.