Amid the August frenzy
of female hummingbirds
battling at my feeders
one male sneaks in for a moment
and I haven’t seen him since.
There are more and more hummers at my feeders now. All females. I’ve been watching for males, suspecting they’ve already migrated. Late last week, lo and behold: A straggler? A south-bound traveler on a refueling rest stop? He may be the last male I see this season.
Godspeed, little one.
Went on vacation last week and upon returning, a discovery
that only the female hummers come to my feeders now.
Quite possibly, the fiery-throated males have migrated
to central Mexico or Panama. —How I miss them.
These females are suddenly voracious drinkers…preparation?
Previously, the sugar water in the feeders lasted several days until I had to change it to keep it from fermenting in the high heat, i.e, avoiding drunk hummingbirds. Now the feeders are drained in a day and half. Males migrate first…maybe these females really are stocking up. I have also read that hummingbirds occasionally remain in residence all year in some parts of North Carolina. Time will tell…in the meantime, the feeders stay out until I see the little birds no more.
Just a snippet of my current reading, if your weary heart needs a lift today:
“One autumn, a ruby-throat, on its lonely, five-hundred-mile migration—a journey across the gulf of Mexico, which can demand twenty-one hours of nonstops flight—landed, spent, on a drilling platform on the Mississippi coast. The oil company dispatched a helicopter to fly it to shore. The hummingbird spent the winter in a gardener’s greenhouse, then left, fat and healthy, on its spring migration.”
—Sy Montgomery, The Hummingbirds’ Gift: Wonder, Beauty, and Renewal on Wings
Cannot help thinking that sometimes we are the hummingbird at the end of our strength; sometimes we are the oil company with mighty means of helping another living creature…if we but see.
lit bits and pieces 