Posts Tagged ‘Hummingbirds’

Saturday, September 23, 2023

Moose on the Loose in the ADKs, Moose Fest happening this weekend

Star cactus

Hurricane Lee hit mainland, but it was in the Canadian Maritimes (still as a hurricane) with 80 MPH winds. The coastal areas of Massachusetts and Maine suffered some damage from the wind and waves putting out power and flooding water to the areas near the ocean. This area has been hit with every storm coming up the coast and storms coming across the nation, so they didn’t need any more water. It is still raining there today, September 18.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, September 2, 2023

New York State fire tower lighting happening tonight

Woodhull Tower lighting in 2022

Tropical Storm Idalia is crossing the tip of Cuba right now, and it will become a hurricane as it crosses the Gulf of Mexico heading for the west coast of Florida. It is scheduled to hit at high tide on Wednesday, [August 30] with a 7-to-11-foot storm surge in an area that isn’t that much above sea level. People still claim there is no climate change, and that this is just a normal weather pattern. There are three more storms out in the Atlantic. The first one looks like it will stay out to sea, [however] where the other two [will] go hasn’t been determined yet.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, August 26, 2023

Offering visitors a unique experience while banding hummingbirds at Stillwater

Children watch a man band hummingbirds

With all the weather and fire events that are happening, it’s hard to keep track and report on all of them. Here we sit with water up to our eyeballs [in the Adirondacks.] A hurricane hit California and other western states will be getting the rain from it…all the way to the Canadian border. This looks like it will drown areas in California, Nevada, and Arizona. [However,] it may not be enough to help with the fires in Oregon and Washington, as it may go too far to the east. The Canadian provinces won’t be getting much of it there either, where it is needed. They evacuated 20,000 people from the town of Yellow Knife in the Northwest Territory, as fires were within two miles of the town. That’s got to be a scary situation to drive away, not knowing what you might come back to with fires that big.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, August 12, 2023

Bee Balm Going Gang Busters & Butterflies Enjoying Milkweeds

Hummingbird in bee balm.

The heat from Arizona to the east coast hasn’t let up, with [temperatures in] many major cities in the hundreds every day…some over a month now. We are on the cool side, with more rain and thunderstorms passing through. Last Friday [August 4] as we were getting ready to go to the opening of the National Watercolor Show at View [Arts Center in Old Forge] one of those storms had quite a bit of hail in the mix. I did hear of some places across the state that got quarter-size (and bigger) hail in that same storm as it crossed the state.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, August 13, 2022

That’s a wrap for loon banding season 2022

It was getting very dry as the pond was down three inches from the overflow. Because of the heat, the trout decided to stay in the deep water and not jump the last two nights. I got just about an inch in my rain gauge, which will help. The flowers keep growing, and my cup plant is over seven feet tall now and it just started flowering. I put a six-foot wire fence around it this year to hold it up and it is way over that. The bees and hummers like it, and then the fall warblers like the bugs it attracts, and the seed eaters like the flower seeds.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, August 6, 2022

Loon banding is a lot like fishing…you don’t get them all

Fairly typical weather for the Adirondacks with warm days and cool nights with fog over the lakes brought about by the cool air over the warmer lake surface. We again had a couple rainy periods, so I didn’t have to water the garden or the flower beds. The flowers have been going like gang busters, lots of greenery and many blooms. The bee balm is in full flower, and I was just looking out the window before dark and there were six hummers searching out each red bloom and fighting over the next one.

 

Great Grand Daughter Milly Jade Peterson has been the hit of every party for our family out in the Rochester area. As the photo [below] will show, she is already a real show off. Speaking of hummers, Ted Hicks and I plan on being at Stillwater banding hummers on Saturday, August 6, but that hasn’t been set in stone yet. We usually get there about 7:30 a.m. and band until about 11 a.m., depending on how many birds are around. Right now, they are about at their peak number-wise with the little ones out of the nest, and males still hanging on territory.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, July 23, 2022

Loon Census 2022, observing hummingbirds, bears and deer from front porch

A little rain kept my garden growing and flowers blooming. My bee balm has come out, giving the hummers a new place to eat in both the front and back yards. Karen and I sat on the front porch
yesterday (July 17) and the hummer feeders were a beehive of activity all afternoon. In the morning we had a mother bear come through with two of last year’s cubs checking out the bird feeders. The mother and one cub walked around the electric fence. The other cub got confused as to where the others went. It tried to go through the fence, but took a shot and backed off. Then it circled around looking for mom and hit the fence again. It left in a hurry that time, and probably will not try that again.

A few minutes later, there was a doe with twin fawns who were nursing together out in front of the house. It would have made a great picture as they were right in a sunshine spot, but the camera was in the truck. Many birds have been bringing their young ones to the feeders for a snack. Several Blue Jays with young have been coming every day. I set the Potter traps yesterday and caught five of the young ones. I also caught an older Jay that I had banded as a juvenile in July of 2014 which made that bird 8 years and two months old. That is one of the oldest returns I’ve had of a Jay. They usually eat and run never to be seen again, but not this one. I also caught some juvenile Slate-Colored Juncos who were still sporting some pin feathers.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, June 18, 2022

Adirondack animal babies: Nesting bluebirds, fawns, and loons

Since the time of my last column, I had two and a quarter inches of rain, which pushed many of my flowers to bloom and others to grow taller. The sweet peas are climbing the trellis about two inches a day. I guess the pellet fertilizer I gave them is working. The roses are covered with buds, and it looks like the plants are all coming up from the original plant, which is over twenty years old now.

My three trumpet vine honeysuckle vines are covered with blooms, which the hummers like. I fenced in my queen of the forest today (June 12) as the doe which dropped her fawn in the driveway yesterday, was munching close to that plant at daylight this morning.

I also put a fence around my cup plant (not because the deer eat it,) but when it gets to be six feet tall, the stems of the plant will not hold it up, so the fencing keeps it upright as it blooms. The bees love this plant and when it goes to seed, the warblers and goldfinch feed on the bugs and seeds from the flowers. Two Fall seasons ago, I caught six different warbler species feeding in the plant in two days.

» Continue Reading.


Monday, May 30, 2022

The Remarkable Migration and Solitary Lifestyle of the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

The Ruby-Throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) is the only hummingbird species commonly seen in northern New York. Like all hummingbirds, they belong to the avian family Trochilidae. They’re our region’s smallest breeding bird, only growing to about 3 inches long, with a wingspan of around 3 to 4 inches and a body weight of just 2 to 6 grams (roughly the weight of a teaspoon of sugar).
Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Migration 
    The Ruby-Throated Hummingbird is migratory. They return to the North Country every year starting in May. The first to arrive are usually males.
    When adequate flower sources and supplemental feeding are available, a small number of Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds will spend the winter months in Florida, in areas along the southern extremes of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. But most of them will overwinter in Central America, between southern Mexico and western Panama. In both the spring and the fall, many of them travel a migration route that includes a difficult, sometimes punishing, non-stop flight of more than 500 miles across the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. By most accounts, the flyover takes 18 to 20 hours, under favorable conditions.

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Poetry: Hummingbird Ballet

Hummingbird Ballet

Aerial ballet,
Allegro avian wings a-flutter,
Humming an accompaniment
For tiny body suspended in tremolo,
Sipping sweet sugar solution
From flowered feeders.
We suspend our disbelief,
For the micro moment you light,
And sip, savor, the pure grace
Of your miraculous presence.


Wednesday, June 5, 2019

It’s Hummingbird Season

Adult Male Hummingbird courtesy Ian DaviesI’ve always been fascinated by ruby-throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris), the only hummingbird species to regularly breed in eastern North America.

They’re small hummingbirds with slender, slightly curved, black bills, fairly short wings that don’t reach all the way to their tails when sitting, and strikingly radiant iridescent feathers that change in intensity and hue, depending upon the light and your angle of view. All ruby-throated hummingbirds; males, females, and immature birds; flaunt bright emerald- or golden-green on their backs and crowns, with a dull white or pale gray breast. Only the male brandishes the intensely lustrous ruby-red throat for which they’re named. » Continue Reading.


Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Brains Over Brawn for Male Hummingbirds

Long-billed HermitThe following comes from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

When male animals compete over mates, it’s often a showy affair: think of elk tangling antlers or tom turkeys strutting and gobbling. But for a Costa Rican hummingbird, it seems mental prowess holds the edge over mere physical flamboyance.

New experiments show that dominant male Long-billed Hermits have better spatial memories and sing more consistent songs than less successful males, according to research published this month in the journal Scientific Reports. The benefit of a good spatial memory even outweighs the advantages of bigger body size and extra flight power. » Continue Reading.



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