Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 92F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph..
A few clouds. Low near 65F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
Male ruby-throated hummingbird at a feeder.
Male ruby-throated hummingbird at a feeder.
This spring, everyone was telling me they were seeing hummingbirds and I hadn’t seen one. This was mainly because we don’t have many early blooming flowers at our cabin. Early last week though, our azalea burst into a six-foot high, 10-foot diameter lozenge of bright purple. Suddenly, we had hummingbirds.
Then it occurred to me: well, I probably ought to put out the feeder. I mixed four cups of water with one cup of sugar, filled the transparent sub-globular plastic form and hung it on the same metal flower stand that I hang the bin and tube feeders from in the winter. In a matter of hours, there was a hummingbird sitting on the crazy little winding plastic stem that serves as a perch, and it had its beak in the well in the middle of the white plastic daisy.
We have seen them and heard their buzzing flight regularly since. We have a pair and because hummingbirds are fiercely territorial, I don’t expect to see other ruby-throats at the feeder until later in the summer.
For some reason, last year I was reluctant to make my own nectar. I went to the store and bought some of the red stuff that is generally sold. Actual flower nectar is a mixture of fructose, glucose, and sucrose. Many of the commercial blends claim to duplicate this combination of sugars, but many of them also add artificial dyes because of hummingbirds’ reputed fondness for the color red. On the possible up-side, they also add nutrients that aren’t in a simple sugar and water mixture.
Looking for information about this subject online is problematic. Most of the websites are trying to sell something to you, and the information they provide is subjective. Even web pages labeled “For the Birds” or something equally innocuous are sprinkled with hyperlinks that take you to commercial pages. This text is written by someone who either has a strong opinion on
the subject or is being outright paid by a company to write what they are writing. I prefer to seek out nonprofits to get information.
The recipe at the National Audubon Society (audubon.org) site is what I used: they suggest a ¼ cup of sugar mixed into 1 cup of water that has been boiled. Because many humans have decided that refined sugar is bad for them and substitute honey in their own diet, they will also make their nectar with it. Audubon urges against this because honey promotes harmful growth of fungus in the feeders. They also flat-out state that the red dye is unnecessary and don’t bother with it.
I checked the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology site (birds.cornell.edu) and found the same recipe and the same advice plus a little more. They said the ¼:1 ratio was good for hot, dry weather, but it could be increased to ⅓:1 in cold, foggy weather, which is frankly what we have been getting in central New Hampshire for the past few days.
They also noted that if you make small batches, there is no need to boil the water. Everyone in my town has well water, so unless they have their own softening equipment in the basement, it is not being treated with anything. If you live in a town with municipal water, they will generally add chlorine to the water and you should probably boil that off.
The Lab of O notes that many of the hummingbird feeders are made with red pieces, which makes dying the nectar red redundant. In addition, since we have all seen hummingbirds hovering in front of flowers that are not red, their fondness for the color is a bit overstated.
Why are hummingbirds looking for nectar anyway?
The simplest answer is because they need the energy in order to fly. Hummingbird flight has been studied intensively because it is mechanically different from that of other birds and even from insects. In order to hover, hummingbirds beat their wings in a figure-8 pattern with 75% of the lift from the downstroke and 25% from the upstroke. In insects, the lift is divided evenly between strokes.
A 2007 study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology by Bret Tobalske (University of Portland, Oregon) and several others used several synchronized high-speed video cameras to document the forward flight of the rufous hummingbird. Their results agreed with earlier studies that found that hummingbirds move forward by tilting their bodies downward from the angle maintained during hovering.
However, hummingbirds significantly altered other wing kinematics including chord angle, angle of attack, anatomical stroke-plane angle relative to their body, percent of wingbeat in downstroke, wingbeat amplitude, angular velocity of the wing, wingspan at mid-downstroke, and span ratio of the wingtips and wrists.
In other words, forward flight in hummingbirds is more complicated than we thought, and it is unique, and not just among birds. The researchers found that compared to other birds, hummingbird wings are much more rigidly held with less flexibility at the wrists. The wrist is the part of the wing that angles forward on the leading edge. The primary feathers extend outward and backward from it. Most birds have an alula (‘winglet’) there, a few feathers that can be lifted when the bird wants to slow its flight without stalling. Somewhere along their evolutionary history, hummingbirds lost these because their method of flight did not require them.
No birds have a receptor (protein) that reacts to sweetness. Hummingbirds, because of their energy needs, have evolved a way to detect nectar by modifying the carbohydrate receptor. They did not, of course, do this in a basement workshop. Rather, individual birds with variations of the receptor that detects umami (savoriness) tended to survive and produce offspring, i.e. by natural selection.
But don’t put out soy sauce for your hummingbirds.
Bill Chaisson has been a birdwatcher for over 50 years. He is a former managing editor of the Eagle Times. He now lives and works in Wilmot.
Your comment has been submitted.
There was a problem reporting this.
Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language. PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK. Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated. Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything. Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person. Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts. Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article. Allow up to 24 hours for comment approval.
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos.