Summer is...hummingbirds!

As the squeaky-squeak chatter of hummingbird-speak rattled back and forth across the deck, a light evening breeze ruffled the pages of the book I was reading. It was a freshening breeze, but fleeting, and it reminded me to put the book down and listen to the season before it was gone…

A young male Ruby-throated Hummingbird preens in the plum tree beside our deck. Moments before, he had been squeaking and squawking like the warrior he is, having successfully chased two other hummers away from his feeder. 

King of the North Feeder and all its environs...

The sounds of hummers fighting and squabbling over nectar is synonymous with summer around our house.

Bokeh 
Several people have emailed me asking how I captured the cool background. I had nothing to do with it. Mama Nature and timing took care of it. I photographed the bird around 6:00 p.m. on the north side of the deck. The hummer was sitting in a plum tree with beautiful maroon leaves. Behind the plum was a hornbeam tree lit by the evening sun. Its bright green sunlit leaves peaking through the dark maroon plum leaves created the splashes of color. I used a shallow depth of field to create the blurred background (bokeh), but truly Mamma Nature took care of the rest. Click here and here for a quick explanation of bokeh.  If you look at the two photos following, you can see the background has lost some of its punch. The shift of the sun killed the brightly lit green background leaves...

Juveniles and female hummingbirds look similar, but since this bird has pronounced markings on his throat, 
I think he is a male. Females are usually more white.

...little emerald pinecone feathers glitter in the sun.

With razor-sharp, stops, starts and spins, hummingbirds' aerial combat feats are amazing...and mesmerizing. It's hard to turn away from their supercharged swoops of acceleration and agility. These tiny birds have it going on, and their sounds and displays make me summertime happy, but they won't stick around for long. Adult males are the first leave. They head south about a month earlier than the females and juveniles. It's already August 6, and adult males often start their journey home by mid-August. I don't want to think about summer ending...and these little birds going with it, so I'll ignore the shortening days and enjoy the heat and hummer-squabbles as long as I can.

A slow-motion hummingbird video...
Rick was standing next to our trumpet honeysuckle plant when a hummingbird flew up and started sipping nectar from the long, tubular flowers. He had his cell phone on him, so he captured a little video. He used the slow-motion option, and it actually shows the figure-eight motion of the hummingbird's wings in flight (I added a little music for fun).



Ruby-throated Hummingbird in Slow Motion from Kelly Riccetti on Vimeo.

 
Ruby-throated Hummingbird in Slow Motion -- part 2 from Kelly Riccetti on Vimeo.

Sounds of Summer

Last week when I was filling a feeder at the very back of our yard, I heard the call of a returning Red-winged Blackbird. My heart skipped a quick beat, and I had to stop and listen twice to make sure I had heard what I thought I had heard. It was gray and dreary, my fingers hurt from the nip of cold through my leather gloves, and I was mucking through the mud in lovely red boots, so for me, the call was out of place.


For me, the Red-winged Blackbird’s call means summer. As a kid, I can remember baking out in the sun while playing wiffle ball or looking for crawdads under rocks in the creek and hearing that wonderful bird sound always around us. At the time, I didn’t know it was the call of a Red-winged Blackbird. To me it was just one of the early sounds of summer, and I liked it. To this day, the red wing’s call makes me happy. It can evoke the feeling of summer heat and summer freedom…open space, blue sky, and water.


One day last summer, Rick, Matty and I headed up to the Spring Valley Wildlife Area. It was blazing hot…the kind of heat that just absorbs into your skin and makes you feel good. Walking across the boardwalk through the marsh, male Red-winged Blackbirds were scattered throughout the reeds, heads thrown back, singing into the heat. That exact moment was so beautiful it is branded in my mind. I had Matty and Rick with me, the sun was warm, and my childhood sounds of summer were all around me, melting past and present together.

Last week, when the red wing sang briefly in my back yard, anticipation of summer and the nostalgia it often brings spiked in my heart. As a coincidence, that night, while doing his homework, Matty had to define the word nostalgia and come up with its antonym. He decided nostalgia was longing for the past, and its antonym would be longing for the future. After a few moments, the word “anticipation” popped in his head. I had to chuckle…with a Red-winged Blackbird in spring at my house, you can’t have one without the other!

I miss our little rubies and emeralds...

I've really enjoyed the January and February snows. So many beautiful birds visit my feeders during the snowstorms, and Red looks exceptionally pretty against the white, so I haven't started in with that I-can't-wait-for-the-sun-to-take-over thing yet, but this evening, I made the mistake of looking at some pics of summer...warm, lovely summer filled with summer birds and summer flowers, and I started to get...antsy. Not good. It's way too early to start thinking about open windows, warm breezes, and cherry tomatoes plucked right off the vine for lunch.

...but we can start thinking about our little rubies and emeralds, because they are starting to think about us and their Big Fly north:

Photos Rick took of one of our female 

Ruby-throated Hummingbirds

From the Hummingbird Journey North Web site:

Beginning February 5th, weekly spring migration updates will be posted here every Thursday, from February to June. Get ready to track the migration! Hummingbirds will move north to nest and travel across the continent. Find out how to report your sightings and track the migration on real-time maps.

This is a really fun site. If you haven't tried it out yet, give it a look.