Photo by Chris Bosak
A Ruby-throated Hummingbird hovers near a feeder in Danbury, Conn., summer 2016

The vast majority of the hummingbirds have gone south by now. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do another post on these spectacular tiny birds. I did a series of posts and bird columns on hummingbirds a few months ago and received a tremendous amount of feedback. So here, in no particular order or font, is a ton of information from Birds of New England readers. Thanks so much for your feedback and feel free to write any time. Siimply comment on this post or send me an email to bozclark@earthlink.net

From Marsha,

We live in condos on a large open pond surrounded by trees so it’s a perfect environment for the little birds, lots of open space to chase each other around and lots of areas to perch. I can’t seem to get them to come to my feeder (I have one and my neighbor has 3) but they do occasionally visit my hanging petunias and fuschias which I specifically hung knowing hummers are attracted to the tubular flowers. They are extremely entertaining to watch and I was very disappointed to learn that they were actually being aggressive toward each other and not playing. Oh well, I guess it can’t be Disney all the time…

From Joan,

I have a feeder hanging about 2 feet from the glass jalousies that enclose my breezeway and see these little guys every day.  I don’t have any flowers near them (my yard is very shaded) but there are some coleus plants below the feeder so perhaps they see those bright colors.  I also have a hairy woodpecker who drinks from the hummingbird feeder and I find that I must refill it about every 4 days since he is so thirsty!  He just hooks his feet over the edge where the base meets the clear upper part and drinks away.  There are 3 plastic flowers around the base of the feeder that the birds drink from and they are a couple inches apart but if one hummingbird is drinking, the other one won’t go to one of the other flowers and in fact, if there are two of them around at the same time, they dive bomb each other.  One of the hummingbirds that comes has the bright red spot on his throat and the other one looks like the one in your picture without the red throat.  I can be just inside the windows that are tilted out and they come bopping around right up to the window.  I love seeing them and know they won’t be around too much longer but then it will be time to start buying sunflower seed for all my other winged friends Continue reading →