There is an elfin quality to the Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Minnesota’s smallest bird. Their nests have been compared to large thimbles, their eggs are the size of peas, they use strands of spider silk to hold the nest together and thistle down to line it. It sounds like an abode of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
This sprite-like aura is enhanced by my sense that I can conjure them out of nowhere. Each May at our cabin on Lake Superior, the woods are green and unbroken. That early, there is not a single flower anywhere, and even the leaves are the size of mouse ears. Yet, if I fill my red feeder with sugar water and hang it out on a spruce limb, within the hour, there will be a hummingbird sipping nectar. Where do they come from and what do they eat? because surely they are not relying on my ephemeral feeder.
Ruby-throated hummingbirds are the northern-most members of a large, varied family found only in the Americas, mostly in the tropics. “Our” hummers show their affinity by overwintering in the tropics from coastal southern Mexico south, and occasionally on the Gulf Coast. They arrive in Minnesota in early May. Many people who feed their backyard birds hang their feeders at this time, eager to attract the bejeweled little acrobats. Often, after an initial appearance, the hummers abandon the feeders and are not seen again until the fall migration.
To keep the hummers in your yard throughout the summer and make it an attractive place to nest, Val Cunningham of St. Paul Audubon suggests growing red, tubular flowers in the garden. Native plants like cardinal flower, bergamot, or columbine are particularly desirable. Native plants attract native insects, and though it would seem that hummingbirds eat primarily nectar, they consume a fair amount of very tiny insects—gnats, plant lice, small bees, tiny wasps, and minute caterpillars. Even very small babies need protein.
The division of labor among a hummingbird pair seems lop-sided, if one thinks anthropomorphically. The female alone is responsible for building the nest and camouflaging it with bits of moss and lichen. She alone incubates the eggs, and when they hatch, she alone feeds the nestlings. The male seldom visits the nest. He’s occupied with guarding the food source and/or the nest itself, flashing his metallic red throat.
During fall migration, hummers are known to congregate at large stands of jewelweed that grow along waterways. One September, I encountered at least a dozen, flitting and squeaking amid jewelweed edging the bank of the Mississippi River. Soon the elves would be off to warmer climes, fueled by sweetness from flowers.
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