Hummingbirds: Remembrance of Summer

Winter brings us birds that do not nest in our area. Some are just passing through; others are regular winter visitors that come for our bird feeders. We do miss our summer residents, especially the hummingbirds. This year our first hummer arrived on March 20th, later than usual. We enjoyed their antics (and wars) all summer. In October we start keeping careful notes to track our last sighting for the year which is usually sometime before the 14th. It is our practice to leave the feeders up until the end of the month which turned out to be a good thing this year. After a gap of several days we had a sudden flurry of visitors, 2 or 3 at a time with our last sighting on October 28th. Bad weather somewhere must have delayed this last group but we were glad to see them for whatever reason.


This hummingbird was a summer resident in a surprisingly peaceful mood.