Heading South so soon? #phenology

For the past week or two, I've been refilling the oriole / hummingbird nectar feeder, hanging from the deck railing, with sugar water every day or every other day. There's been up to a half  dozen ruby-throated hummingbirds at a time trying to guzzle it down plus, I think, an occasional young of the year oriole and several downy woodpeckers helping out. So far today I've noticed only a few hummingbirds at that feeder. Have some of the adults decided to head for warmer climes? Audubon Guides notes that:

As early as July, ruby-throated hummingbirds start accumulating fat.  According to Cornell’s The Birds of North America Online, a ruby-throated hummingbird’s body weight can double in just seven to ten days.  Research has shown that the average amount of weight gained by hummingbirds prior to migration is sufficient to fuel a 500-mile flight – a necessity if they choose to cross the Gulf of Mexico.  For those who wonder if leaving their hummingbird feeders up late into the fall might delay the birds’ departure, fear not.  The hummingbirds visiting feeders in the fall are probably migrants, not residents, and will help, not hinder, their migration.

female ruby-throated hummingbird

Photo by J. Harrington

The Journey North web site has announced this week that Fall Migration Season is Underway! I've noticed a male or two this week so, if the local birds are leaving, it's just begun yesterday or today. Comparing the size of a hummingbird with the distance of their journey leaves me just as astounded, perhaps more so, that the migrations of monarch butterflies. Butterflies migrate using different generations to run legs of a relay migration. Hummingbirds do it in one generation; the youngsters have never done it before; and both parents leave ahead of the young'uns. How does that work?

Hummingbird Abecedarian

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Arriving with throats like nipped roses, like a tiny
bloom fastened to each neck, nothing else
cuts the air quite like this thrum to make the small
dog at my feet whine and yelp. So we wait—no
excitement pinned to the sky so needled and our days open
full of rain for weeks. Nothing yet from the ground speaks
green except weeds. But soon you see a familiar shadow
hovering where the glass feeders you brought
inside used to hang because the ice might shatter the pollen
junk and leaf bits collected after this windiest,wildest of winters.
Kin across the ocean surely felt this little jump of blood, this
little heartbeat, perhaps brushed across my grandmother’s
mostly grey braid snaked down her brown
neck and back across the Indian and the widest part of the Pacific
ocean, across the Mississippi, and back underneath my
patio. I’ve lost track of the times I’ve been silent in my lungs,
quiet as a salamander. Those times I wanted to decipher the mutter
rolled off a stranger’s full and beautiful lips. I only knew they
spoke in Malayalam—my father’s language—and how
terrific it’d sound if I could make my own slow mouth
ululate like that in utter sorrow or joy. I’m certain I’d be
voracious with each light and peppered syllable
winged back to me in the form of this sort of faith, a gift like
xenia offered to me. And now I must give it back to this tiny bird, its
yield far greener and greater than I could ever repay—a light like
zirconia—hoping for something so simple and sweet to sip.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.