Hummingbirds

Hummers are leaving us, zone 7 is seeing the swarms move south, is migration early for you guys?

Not sire about the hummers. but
started seeing monarchs migraring about
three weeks ago, which IS early

And if temps today are an indicator, it
will be an early fall (with Indian
summer thrown in for interest and fall
color).

Yeah, am getting my sweatpants out for the nights when in Va- 50*!

They are starting to show up in numbers here in South Texas. We have a small population that is here year round, but we are definitely seeing more visitors by the day. El Nino is supposedly coming back which means wet cool winter in Texas. We can sure use the rain in my part of the woods....err coastal plains.

I haven't seen any monarchs yet, but have been getting more Queens visiting lately. Still waiting for the monarch to come and munch all of the milkweed!

Russell

Our hummers are starting to leave--haven't seen a male for over a week. The monarch's are definitely migrating. We released two today, and they headed straight south.

Do the males normally leave first? Am still seeing very hungry hummers in Tennessee, wanting feeders burped and filled, but was noticing they are all getting along REALLY well, chuckl

Thank you, I will remember that,

I did not have a very good "turnout" this year for migration. I thought maybe I'd have a ton more because of the drought, but not a whole lot this year.

A lot of birds were sighted east of their normal grounds- I was told this while in Va- the gentleman was quite excited he'd sighted them so far east as I recall, I am pretty certain the drought and hi winds are not a wee bit left free of blame

What causes a hummingbird to lose ability to fly? I found one last week, that couldn't. I wondered if he had been stung by a wasp, on the feeder. It seemed to recover and fly off later.

Exhaustion, they starve so easy, needed to catch his breath?

I'm in 7B and the hummers bugged out about 2 weeks ago. We have the feeders up still just in case we have travellers stop by to rest. Last year was the latest we'd ever seen our regulars and they left during the first week of October so this is a pretty normal year for us.

It seemed to recover just fine. Maybe it was exhausted. They all look alike.

Hummers do that, I think it's dehydration, hunger, they can be quite brutal to each other as well, sometimes they recover, sometimes not.

I caught this one cruising my duranta late yesterday...it only took about 200 shots to get a decent one...hehehe. They sure are fast! I caught a glimpse of a different variety at my feeder, but I didn't get a good look at it. The underside of the tail feathers was almost blonde, and the bird seemed a little fatter than the ruby throats we have visit most of the time. I wish I could describe it better, but I just caught a glimpse and then it was gone.

Russell

Russell, I can't help on the id, but I am sure you could get a fast identification on the bird identification forum. (look under communities tab)
The pics you have a wonderful ....good job.

Look for an Anna? Don't know more but remember seeing a pic once

I think is looked more like a rufous based on the underside of the tail feathers, but I just can't be sure. I found a map online that shows they don't normally end up here, but I guess there is always a chance of them coming through. I live on Texas coast and we have lots of different travelers during the migrational periods.

I will look through the forums and see if I can see anything that looks similar. It is so hard to take mental notes when they fly away so quickly.

Russell

This message was edited Oct 10, 2012 11:40 PM

Yup, speedy birds, the 2 are apparently a lot alike- glad you found some pix!

I think migration is very early this year. Besides hummers, I haven't seen a robin or red wing blackbird in quite some time either. My Baltimore Orioles left early as well.

That reminds me I noticed a crowd of Robins somewhere a month ago that I hadn't expected them yet- think it was in southern Mo-