Out of Synch
Meredith Lemon | December 2017
Let’s take it back to July of 2009, to an early morning, when my father calls to me, “Ruby’s out at the feeder again!”. Ruby was the male hummingbird that made frequent trips to my feeder right outside the kitchen window. Him as well as his mate gathered throughout the flower garden, filled with daylilies and lupines and other bright-colored perennials, as well as around my mother's annuals of impatiens and petunias in the front yard.
I had gotten that red feeder in the spring and filled it with the right ratio of sugar and water, hoping to lure any visiting hummingbirds right to my back porch so my dad and I could watch and gaze while eating our banana and bran on those early summer mornings.
Ruby-throated Hummingbirds prefer to feed on red or orange flowers (though it's not good to color the sugar water you put in a hummingbird feeder, sometimes you can buy feeders with the glass tinted red or orange). Like many birds, hummingbirds have outstanding color vision and can see into the ultraviolet spectrum; an array of colors which humans are unable to see.
A flash of green and red, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird is the only hummingbird that is known to breed in the eastern United States. But in terms of area, this species occupies the largest breeding range of any North-American hummingbird. These brilliant, tiny, precision-flying creatures glitter like sapphires and various shiny jewels in the full sun, then vanish with a swift zip toward the next nectar source. Feeders and flower gardens are great ways to attract these birds. I had intentionally turned my yard into a haven for a buzzing cloud of hummingbirds that summer of 2009.
Due to their tiny stature my dad and I used a pair of binoculars to catch a zoomed-in glimpse of our tiny visitors. The male hummer, and our most frequent company, had an emerald green back and an iridescent ruby-red throat that shined like real jewels in the sunlight. “He was the most beautiful, dainty bird I have ever seen” I thought to myself. Emerald, whom we named his mate, came only came around occasionally. She had a green back and a white throat, and was a bit bigger than the male.
Ruby-throats are intensely inquisitive and thus easily attracted to feeders, where males in particular typically display aggressive territoriality toward rival hummers, other birds, and even insects such as bees, butterflies, and sphinx moths. They quickly become accustomed to human presence and are known to swoop down to investigate red articles of clothing as potential food sources. Feeders hung at windows attract just as many visitors as ones farther from structures, and the bird that claims a feeder as its territory may spend much of the day perched nearby, guarding the food source against intruders. We saw this with Ruby.
Not only are these birds beautiful and quick, they are also very smart. A hummingbird’s brain makes up a colossal 4.2 percent of its weight. Proportionally, that’s the largest of any bird’s, and by comparison, human brains are only 2 percent of our body weight. Inside that big brain is an encyclopedia of essentially every flower they’ve ever visited, including on migration routes. They can figure out how long to wait between visits so the flowers have time to generate more nectar. They can even recognize humans, and know which ones can be counted on to refill empty hummingbird feeders. I’d like to think that Ruby and Emerald recognized me that summer of 2009.
Ruby and Emerald began to become a large part of my mornings, while they soon seeped into my day-to-day life as well as my thoughts and contemplations. Their steadfast mirco-movements and swift, precise lives drove themselves into my dreams and became what I thought of when I needed peace. As they can transition from a steady hover, to zipping forwards or backwards, flipping around, and even flying upside-down, doing all of this so fast we can barely see it—beating their wings between 70 and 200 times per second. This power, precision, and agility allows them to reach speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. The peace I attained from them became an important lesson for me; on how to find serenity in the most hectic, chaotic, and fast-paced parts of life.
2012 was the last summer I noticed a steady visitation schedule from a couple of Ruby-throated hummingbirds. I wasn't quite sure why, but I told myself that they had probably moved onto another nectar-haven in a neighborhood nextdoor. Now, with what I know about climate change my assumptions have shifted elsewhere. A growing body of research indicates flowers are blooming earlier because of warming temperatures. There is potential for this change to impact the established concurrent relationship between hummingbirds arriving on their breeding grounds, and bloom times of their food sources.
Higher temperatures are driving sea-level rise and changes in snowpack which in turn are reshaping when and where the nectar resources hummingbirds rely on are available. Picture a scenario of arriving at the airport for a flight, only to find that it had left the day before with no heads-up. Or making an 8 hour road-trip to your favorite mountain or lake destination, with no signs or indications of gas stations. These challenges are similar to what hummingbirds may be confronting as they deal with the impacts of global climate change, and they may be withheld the information they need to find their important nectar sources after migrating to their breeding grounds.
According to a recent study, the arrival time of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird onto their breeding grounds is in fact changing. Will these changes affect local pollination systems and will the Ruby-throated Hummingbird be able to keep the pace with accelerated warming? It breaks my heart to say I’ve seen this change through my own back yard window, and I am not for certain birds like Ruby and Emerald will be able to keep up. What I do know for certain, is that I’ve not forgotten about Ruby or Emerald, and maybe, they somehow remember a tiny part of me and my red feeder.
Meredith Lemon | December 2017
Let’s take it back to July of 2009, to an early morning, when my father calls to me, “Ruby’s out at the feeder again!”. Ruby was the male hummingbird that made frequent trips to my feeder right outside the kitchen window. Him as well as his mate gathered throughout the flower garden, filled with daylilies and lupines and other bright-colored perennials, as well as around my mother's annuals of impatiens and petunias in the front yard.
I had gotten that red feeder in the spring and filled it with the right ratio of sugar and water, hoping to lure any visiting hummingbirds right to my back porch so my dad and I could watch and gaze while eating our banana and bran on those early summer mornings.
Ruby-throated Hummingbirds prefer to feed on red or orange flowers (though it's not good to color the sugar water you put in a hummingbird feeder, sometimes you can buy feeders with the glass tinted red or orange). Like many birds, hummingbirds have outstanding color vision and can see into the ultraviolet spectrum; an array of colors which humans are unable to see.
A flash of green and red, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird is the only hummingbird that is known to breed in the eastern United States. But in terms of area, this species occupies the largest breeding range of any North-American hummingbird. These brilliant, tiny, precision-flying creatures glitter like sapphires and various shiny jewels in the full sun, then vanish with a swift zip toward the next nectar source. Feeders and flower gardens are great ways to attract these birds. I had intentionally turned my yard into a haven for a buzzing cloud of hummingbirds that summer of 2009.
Due to their tiny stature my dad and I used a pair of binoculars to catch a zoomed-in glimpse of our tiny visitors. The male hummer, and our most frequent company, had an emerald green back and an iridescent ruby-red throat that shined like real jewels in the sunlight. “He was the most beautiful, dainty bird I have ever seen” I thought to myself. Emerald, whom we named his mate, came only came around occasionally. She had a green back and a white throat, and was a bit bigger than the male.
Ruby-throats are intensely inquisitive and thus easily attracted to feeders, where males in particular typically display aggressive territoriality toward rival hummers, other birds, and even insects such as bees, butterflies, and sphinx moths. They quickly become accustomed to human presence and are known to swoop down to investigate red articles of clothing as potential food sources. Feeders hung at windows attract just as many visitors as ones farther from structures, and the bird that claims a feeder as its territory may spend much of the day perched nearby, guarding the food source against intruders. We saw this with Ruby.
Not only are these birds beautiful and quick, they are also very smart. A hummingbird’s brain makes up a colossal 4.2 percent of its weight. Proportionally, that’s the largest of any bird’s, and by comparison, human brains are only 2 percent of our body weight. Inside that big brain is an encyclopedia of essentially every flower they’ve ever visited, including on migration routes. They can figure out how long to wait between visits so the flowers have time to generate more nectar. They can even recognize humans, and know which ones can be counted on to refill empty hummingbird feeders. I’d like to think that Ruby and Emerald recognized me that summer of 2009.
Ruby and Emerald began to become a large part of my mornings, while they soon seeped into my day-to-day life as well as my thoughts and contemplations. Their steadfast mirco-movements and swift, precise lives drove themselves into my dreams and became what I thought of when I needed peace. As they can transition from a steady hover, to zipping forwards or backwards, flipping around, and even flying upside-down, doing all of this so fast we can barely see it—beating their wings between 70 and 200 times per second. This power, precision, and agility allows them to reach speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. The peace I attained from them became an important lesson for me; on how to find serenity in the most hectic, chaotic, and fast-paced parts of life.
2012 was the last summer I noticed a steady visitation schedule from a couple of Ruby-throated hummingbirds. I wasn't quite sure why, but I told myself that they had probably moved onto another nectar-haven in a neighborhood nextdoor. Now, with what I know about climate change my assumptions have shifted elsewhere. A growing body of research indicates flowers are blooming earlier because of warming temperatures. There is potential for this change to impact the established concurrent relationship between hummingbirds arriving on their breeding grounds, and bloom times of their food sources.
Higher temperatures are driving sea-level rise and changes in snowpack which in turn are reshaping when and where the nectar resources hummingbirds rely on are available. Picture a scenario of arriving at the airport for a flight, only to find that it had left the day before with no heads-up. Or making an 8 hour road-trip to your favorite mountain or lake destination, with no signs or indications of gas stations. These challenges are similar to what hummingbirds may be confronting as they deal with the impacts of global climate change, and they may be withheld the information they need to find their important nectar sources after migrating to their breeding grounds.
According to a recent study, the arrival time of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird onto their breeding grounds is in fact changing. Will these changes affect local pollination systems and will the Ruby-throated Hummingbird be able to keep the pace with accelerated warming? It breaks my heart to say I’ve seen this change through my own back yard window, and I am not for certain birds like Ruby and Emerald will be able to keep up. What I do know for certain, is that I’ve not forgotten about Ruby or Emerald, and maybe, they somehow remember a tiny part of me and my red feeder.