Hummer Bulletin

The young female rufous hummer is still here, and the picture taken of her yesterday shows she is maturing into an adult. The orange spot in the center of her throat is supposed to indicate that, so the books say. Remember to click on the picture for an expanded view. She has been around all winter season but may leave soon for Oregon/Washington country – where she may breed for the first time. It will be interesting to see if she comes back next year, as the buff-bellied has for the last three years. It is still here, by the way, but is very wary and hard to photograph. This is kind of odd as some of my friends say this species is very easy-going around humans. Well, not this human.

The other picture is the first arrival (yesterday) of this year’s group of ruby-throated hummers. It is a full adult male, as the picture shows, and it looks unbanded. Anticipating more arrivals soon, I put out three 8-ounce feeders this morning. Last year we hosted at least 400 ruby-throats in late spring/early summer. When all these get here we have to shift to the really big feeders. Dave Patton has come out almost every year to band some of the ruby-throats and I hope he has time to do it again, several people have asked to be included this year in this interesting operation. We’ll see.

Same river news as yesterday. Starting to see some water in the Ohio and upper Mississippi. Need a good bunch of water, getting hungry for some crawfish.

Rise and Shine, Jim