Riverdale’s Hummingbirds flitting here and there

I finally saw my first hummingbird this season. And it wasn’t at my hummingbird feeder, which I so carefully tend; it was fluttering above the red bee balm plant that was in full flower outside my kitchen window. Since I have begun bird watching, attracting birds by putting out seed, I have seen birds that I didn’t know existed. But while I have always been enchanted by hummingbirds, I have rarely seen them.

The first time I saw something that I thought might be a hummingbird, I was a pre-teenager outdoors in our small backyard. Something quite small was fluttering madly on the ground, seemingly entangled in long grass stalks. Having never seen anything likes this before, I was very cautious. If it was a large – very large – insect, I didn’t want any part of it. If it was a hummingbird, I definitely wanted to see it more closely and certainly wanted to free it. I tried to disentangle it – despite trepidation – but it was probably injured and couldn’t seem to free itself, even with help. I never quite resolved the question of what I was looking at, but I strongly suspect it was, indeed, a hummingbird.

Over the years, I have caught glimpses of them, particularly in lavishly flowered gardens.  Because of their energetic flight, I have never really been able to examine one closely. When we were in Israel in the fall a few years back, I saw a whole group of darting birds and started dragging people out to see them. It turns out that it is an entirely different bird called a Palestinian sunbird or a northern orange-tufted sunbird (Cinnyris osea – Family Nectariiniidae), while our local bird is a ruby-throated hummingbird ( Archilochus colubris – Family Trochildae) .

Last year I finally went out and bought a hummingbird feeder, which is essentially a plastic bottle with little feeding spouts, where the birds can sip a sugar syrup you can cook up in your kitchen by dissolving one part sugar to four parts water. I had the feeder outside where I could see it through a window, but never once saw a hummingbird near it. Before this season, I called Wild Birds Unlimited on Route 17S in New Jersey (201-599-0099) to ask what I was doing wrong. First they asked if the feeder was red, since this color is highly attractive to hummingbirds. Then they explained that I needed to change the syrup solution every three days. I hadn’t been doing that because I thought that if the bottle still had some solution, everything was fine. Apparently not, so every week I make up a fresh solution, which I keep in the refrigerator until I put out refills. Still no hummingbirds. I moved the feeder further out into a sunnier spot in the garden. Still no hummingbirds. And now I have seen just the one visiting the bee balm in an altogether different garden spot.

Hummingbirds are among the world’s tiniest birds. Their name derives from the whirring sound of their wings as they hover, lapping up nectar. Amazingly, they are capable of flying forward, backward and sideways as well. Their wings beat 50 times a second and their hearts beat 1,200 times a minute. They have the highest metabolic rate of any warm-blooded animal – which leads to the question of what happens during the night or any time when food is scarce. Hummingbirds are one of the animal species that can enter a state called torpor – similar to hibernation – during which the metabolic rate slows to 1/15 of the normal rate. This process also occurs in some marsupial species, as well as mice and bats. Despite the birds’ prodigious physiological attributes, their feet are relatively weak. They do perch,but do not use their feet for walking or hopping.

We are familiar with bees as pollinators, but birds also fill that niche. Pollination by birds is called ornithophily. Hummingbirds, sunbirds, spiderhunters, honeycreepers and honeyeaters are the most common bird pollinators. The plants they pollinate usually have funnel-like cups in orange, scarlet, red or white, with a strong perch. The flowers that they pollinate include shrimp plants, verbenas, bee balm (well, that makes sense), honeysuckles, fuchsias, hibiscus and bromeliads. 

As I sit here typing, I have a pot of sugar syrup on the stove. When it cools, I’ll go out, wash out the feeder bottle and try to tempt my local hummingbirds with a new offering.