Date: 09/07/2010

Number: 1

The last male Ruby Throated Hummer was last seen about a week ago. He was here for several days feeding like crazy then disapeared.

We have had a few females this past week and they appear to be Rufous hummers...with broad tails edged in white and black patches on their throats...a few have had an irridescent purple patch on the middle of throat....beautiful to watch...very territorial...they will even chase away the Baltimore Orioles from the feeder right next to theirs.

We will really miss them when they are gone.

A REMINDER about feeders and COLD weather..(under 50)...Please push in your perches so the Hummers have to hover to feed...otherwise, if the weather is too cold, then so is the food in the feeder. Their little bodies will go into hypothermia if they drink the liquid while sitting but will not experience hypothermia if they are hovering and drinking at the same time.

We learned this from past experience. Now when the weather changes and gets cooler at night, we push in the perches and ...no more hypothermia!!

WE had the experience of a Hummer hanging UPSIDE DOWN from the feeder...then after a few moments, he dropped to the ground. WE called our local bird expert who told us all about Hypothermia and Hummers. We picked up the Hummer and took it into our house for awhile. She told us we could hold it in our hands to warm it up..but we put it in a box with a few leaves and pieces of cloth to let it warm up. After about 30 minutes, the litte Hummer started to hop around the box and seemed back to normal..Then, we took it outside and released it. It happily flew away.

And of course, we had also pushed in the perches on all our feeders OR broke them off so this would never happen again.

Fairfield, IA

Latitude: 41 Longitude: -91.9

Observed by: Sharon
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