Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Gardens for North America’s Iconic Hummers

Summary: North America’s iconic hummers never forget their new and old, planned and wild, ruby-throated hummingbird gardens in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Male ruby-throated hummingbird guards his territory from atop a tomato stake: Joe Schneid, Louisville, Kentucky, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ruby-throated hummingbirds are in their northerly ruby-throated hummingbird gardens in Canada and the United States between February and May and in their southerly ruby-throated hummingbird gardens in Mexico southward as of November.

Atlantic, central and Mississippi migration routes bring North America’s most iconic hummers, Aristolochus colubris, back and forth between their spring and fall and their winter residences. The 60-mile- (96.56-kilometer-) per-hour low-flier, whose heart beats 1,200 times per minute and wings 75 per second, crosses the 500-mile (804.67-kilometer) Mexican Gulf shortcut non-stop.

Similarly flowering open woodlands and liquid and solid food sources draw the plucky aerialist to both sides of the United States’ borders with Canada and Mexico. One part sugar, boiled and then cooled, and four parts water in red-decorated tubes on red-embellished feeders exert strong pulls on the sharp-sighted migrant to stop.

Planned and wild ruby-throated hummingbird gardens fill habitat niches and follow distribution ranges similar to those of yellow-bellied sapsuckers in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Ruby-throated hummingbirds get liquid refreshment from apple and birch tree saps dripping into depressions drilled by yellow-bellied sapsuckers and from flowering non-woody and woody plant nectars. Non-woody and woody ornithophilous (bird-pollinated) plants have protein-rich arachnid and insect pests that ruby-throated hummers swallow and pollen that the ruby-throated hummer chin- and crown-feathers transfer. Bristled ruby-throated hummingbird tongues impale arthropods, remove insect prey from spider-webs and serve as anti-gravity, capillary-acting split troughs that transport liquids to the throat for swallowing.

Citrus orchards, hackberry groves, scrubby fields, second-growth shrub-lands and tree-scattered bogs and swamps join coniferous, deciduous and mixed forest and woodland clearings and edges as habitats.

George H. Harrison, author of Garden Birds of America, knows of male ruby-throated hummers chasing away unrelated, not related, adults and fledglings from quarter-acre (0.10-hectare) territories.

Mothers-to-be leave two elliptical, 0.51- by 0.33-inch (12.9- by 8.5-millimeter), smooth-shelled, white eggs in nests built within five days and lined 1-inch- (2.54-centimeter-) thick with down. They make 1.75- by 2-inch (4.45- by 5.08-centimeter) nests of bud scales, down and fibers with lichen-covered exteriors and spider-web silk attachments to downward-sloping, leaf-filled branches. Eggs need 14 to 16 days to hatch, and hatchlings 14 to 31 days to fledge, 6 to 50 feet (1.83 to 15.24 meters) above ground.

Month-old fledglings obtain independent living arrangements at 10- to 20-foot (3.05- to 6.09-meter) heights in hickories, hornbeams, maples, oaks, pines and tulip-poplars in ruby-throated hummingbird gardens.

Immature ruby-throated hummers pass for small-sized adult females in ruby-throated hummingbird gardens even though immature males hint of incipiently orange feather-lined throats and of rufous rumps.

Adulthood qualifies ruby-throated hummers for 4.25-inch (10.79-centimeter) wingspans, 0.21-ounce (6-gram) weights, 3.5-inch (8.89-centimeter) lengths and 9-year lifespans for flying backward, down, forward, sideways, up and upside-down. Adults reveal white eyespots and underparts while females showcase brown bodies with white chins and throats and males green bodies with black-billed, green-crowned, red-throated black faces. Adults spend mornings and afternoons around beebalm, buckeye, cardinal-flower, columbine, gay-feather, gladiolus, hibiscus, honeysuckle, jewelweed, mimosa, nasturtium, petunia, sage, thistle, tobacco-plant, trumpet-vine, willow and yellow trumpet-bush.

Nestlings begging, fledglings peeping and adults sounding out t perching, tchew-tchup flying, tchip singing, tic-tic feeding and tsitsitsitsitsitsitsitsi or zeek-ididididid chasing tell of ruby-throated hummingbird presences.

photo by nature photographer and writer Dotty Holcomb Doherty: NPS Chesapeake Bay @ChesapeakeNPS via Twitter Aug. 31, 2015

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

male ruby-throated hummingbird: Joe Schneid, Louisville, Kentucky, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Archilochus_colubris_(Male).jpg

photo by nature photographer and writer Dotty Holcomb Doherty: NPS Chesapeake Bay‏ @ChesapeakeNPS via Twitter Aug. 31, 2015, @ https://twitter.com/ChesapeakeNPS/status/638362541752733696

For further information:

Birds Inc. 28 February 2015. "hummingbird sound - call and wing flapping." YouTube.
Available @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZXLHNFkJxw

Harrison, George H.; and Harrison, Kit. April 1996. Gardens Birds of America: A Gallery of Garden Birds & How to Attract Them. Minocqua, WI: Willow Creek Press.

NPS Chesapeake Bay‏ @ChesapeakeNPS. 31 August 2015. "An amazing pic by Dotty Holcomb Doherty: a female ruby-throated hummingbird (males have the iridescent red throat)." Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/ChesapeakeNPS/status/638362541752733696

“Ruby-Throated Hummingbird.” Audubon > Field Guide > Birds > Guide to North American Birds.
Available @ http://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/ruby-throated-hummingbird

“Ruby-Throated Hummingbird.” National Geographic > Animals > Birds.
Available @ http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/ruby-throat-hummingbird/