Saving Water by the Barrel

This post is based on one that originally ran on March 6, 2017, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

"When the well's dry we know the worth of water," said Benjamin Franklin. That is never more true than during the summer.

Thirsty titmouse at hanging water cooler
(Margo D. Beller)

Here in New Jersey, unlike in other years, we've had plenty of water from an overabundance of spring rain. Reservoirs levels are at or over capacity, making it certain we won't need restrictions on watering lawns or plants. But that is not always the case. In many years July into August is a time of brown grass and thirsty flowers. The birds are thirsty, too, when they come to the water cooler, their bills open to release the heat.

Back in 2017 I attended a program where people learned the value of saving water by making rain barrels to store water for those dryer times during the summer.

I was there as an observer and didn't make my own rain barrel. In my yard MH only mows every few weeks and keeps the mower higher so the grass protects itself, leaving our lawn a bit greener than our neighbors' albeit crunchy in spots. My plants do well in drought and only need to be watered once a week with the hose. But I admit that after attending the program I felt guilty about how much water is wasted coming off the roof and pouring over the driveway to the street and down the drain.

As I wrote in 2017:

Dry forsythia and viburnum, 2015 (Margo D. Beller)

One inch of rain pouring off the average suburban house roof -- 800 square feet -- means approximately 600 gallons of water, according to a fact sheet from the Rutgers University NJ Agricultural Experiment Station in New Brunswick. That's enough water for your garden and your lawn twice over.

Wasting water leads to drought restrictions, usually during the hottest part of summer. So this year, instead of over-using the sprinkler or hose, why not consider a way of collecting at least some of that runoff each time it rains -- a rain barrel.

New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary held its third annual program on how to build your own rain barrel, and it is easy to see why this is a popular program.

Not only did those attending learn something about making their gardens more sustainable while saving water, but they were able to use shop skills many might not have realized they had to create a 55-gallon blue plastic rain barrel (donated by Ocean Spray) at a fraction of the cost of what you'll find at your local Do-It-Yourself store..

Alexandra Cavagrotti, Americorp Watershed Ambassador for the region encompassing the Passaic, Rockaway and Whippany rivers in northern New Jersey, said most homes shed water through gutters and leaders down nonporous surfaces such as driveways, where the water picks up lawn chemicals, car substances and other pollutants and runs into street drains and thus down to streams, rivers and, ultimately, the ocean.

House sparrow at water dish (Margo D. Beller)

Rain barrels are a good way of cutting down on some that polluted, wasted water, said Cavagrotti.

Sherman Hoffman program director Stephanie Punnett said the sanctuary has two rain barrels. "When you have 275 acres, water is problematic," she said. The rain barrels "have been a great help with our native planting" program, that includes removal of invasive, non-native plants throughout the sanctuary.

Plus, rain barrels are fun to make.

Certainly the people making their own were enthusiastically having fun using a drill to create a hole for a faucet and one for draining overflow, then caulking the faucet and putting mesh over the donated screen to keep mosquitoes out (standing water is prime mosquito breeding territory in summer).

One woman, who happened to be Cavagrotti's mother, was wielding the drill like a pro, with the barrel steadied by her husband. "I've built whole houses," she told me when I asked if this was her first rain barrel. I can believe it.

"You get such a feeling of satisfaction" from wielding a drill, said another woman. (Having used a drill I know the feeling.)

For those not power tool-inclined, Cavagrotti and several other Ambassadors helped drill the holes. Americorp is a public service program supported by the U.S. federal government, foundations, corporations and other donors. These Ambassadors teach the importance of water to schools and at programs such as Scherman Hoffman's.

When they finished, everyone put their barrels into their pickups, SUVs or sedans (with a little shifting around of seating), to take them home and position them under a downspout (or not -- Scherman Hoffman's barrels are not connected to the roof, said Punnett, because all of the Hoffman Center’s downspouts are connected directly to a groundwater recharge system. The rain barrels are connected to two other buildings on the property). The more creative can even decorate their barrels for use this summer.

Dry lawn, 2015 (Margo D. Beller)

And that's one thing to keep in mind if you want to buy or build your own rain barrel.

Once it's November, no matter how unusually mild the weather, unhook your rain barrel, use up the remaining water, clean the barrel out and store it inside. You don't want a barrel full of ice that might expand and damage your handiwork. According to Cavagrotti, it's best to use your rain barrel from April through October.

Also, while rain water off a roof is all-natural it may not be all-edible. Some roofs are treated with chemicals to keep mold and moss off. Birds and squirrels have been known to leave their mess on roofs.

So while the water flowing from roof to rain barrel may be fine for your lawn or your flowers or even washing your car, don't put it on your vegetable garden or in your pet's water dish or into a bird bath.

Some of the people making their own rain barrels, 2017
(Margo D. Beller)

You can get more information on rain barrels and wise water use from a number of online sources including the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Water Resources Program.

If you don't want to buy or build a rain barrel, there are other ways of using water wisely in your garden this summer.

Use soaker hoses (available at most garden supply stores) that provide an even, small drip to the roots of plants. Install native plants that are accustomed to your area and can survive dry conditions. Plant more trees -- they will not only provide shade from summer heat but they will suck up rain water that would otherwise go down the sewer drain.

Or create a "rain garden," using trees and native plants, that features a depression in the ground for pooling water. There are many websites on how to design a rain garden including that of the Rain Garden Alliance at http://raingardenalliance.org/planting.

Family Time, Again

She is nearly invisible in the messy cup nest she built at the top of my pear tree, her yellow bill showing as she raises her head to look at me. But I am behind glass on my enclosed porch and no threat to her. After taking about a week to put the nest together, she is sitting on three to five blue eggs and will rarely move off them for the next two weeks or so unless she must.

Like the neighborhood children freed from school to run around their yards and play, my yard is filled with the sound of noisy young, in this case birds.

Robin in my pear tree, July 13, 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

The American robin female in her nest is not the only robin in my yard. There are others flying around, many of them juveniles whose breasts are mottled rather than orange to help camouflage them. Their nest was in my large yew hedge. An adult male robin is feeding them. There could be two robin pairs or these juveniles may be an earlier brood of the same female robin in the pear tree. (Robins can have up to three broods, if conditions are right.)

This is the time of year when, if you are looking for them, you'll likely see birds either holding food for young or nesting materials. Those with food will lead you to squawking young, which, when they get a little bigger, will flock after their parents and make themselves very visible.

In my yard, besides the robins, the types of birds followed by young so far have included cardinal, flicker, chipping sparrow, starling, titmouse and grackle, with large flocks of cedar waxwings flying overhead. The other morning I watched a young grackle pull a worm from the grass beneath the apple tree. The bird is completely dull brown while an adult grackle is iridescent, with a bright yellow bill and eyes. When you are a young bird, you need all the help you can get to survive into adulthood.

This old nest was within a wild rose bush I was cutting
back. It was well hid and protected by thorns. (Margo D. Beller)

Bigger birds - jays, gulls, great blue herons, crows - will eat baby birds, which is why you will often see these birds chased off by smaller birds - red-winged blackbirds, mockingbirds, Eastern kingbirds, for instance - protecting their young. Danger can come at any time from soaring raptors and neighbors' prowling cats.

Take the robin in my pear tree. According to the Cornell Ornithology Lab, on average "only 40 percent of nests successfully produce young. Only 25 percent of those fledged young survive to November. From that point on, about half of the robins alive in any year will make it to the next."  And robins are relatively big songbirds, about eight to 11 inches long. 

All these bird families passing through my yard are fascinating to watch. Small chipping sparrows land in the longish grass and seem to disappear except for the young's buzzy contact calls. Larger starlings stick with their parents as they hunt in the grass and in the winter will join with other family groups to create the huge flocks that seem to undulate in the air like a single organism. When the berries on my viburnums, dogwood and other shrubs are ready, the robins and other fruit-eating birds will feast (as will the squirrels). Then, when it turns cooler and the leaves start to fall and the insects die off, many of these birds will fly south to their winter grounds to eat there in preparation for next spring's migration and breeding.

Mother Robin coming back from a food break. When I took this picture the
male flew off to the flood wall. I am guessing he was watching things
while his mate was away. (Margo D. Beller)

Unlike in past years, I am not watching a house wren brood. The nest box I cleared a few weeks ago was visited by a singing male. I was hopeful. However, it didn't attract a mate and didn't build a nest. It used the box as a temporary roost for a few days and hasn't been seen since. But that's the nice thing about the natural world. While there are no house wrens this year, I have a front-row porch seat for when Mother Robin's eggs hatch.  

Warbler Neck, Birder's Ear and Other Ailments

(RE Berg-Andersson)

"We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.” 

-- George Bernard Shaw

The birds sang around us as we walked the path through the woods at a federal park near where we live. Towhee, wood thrush, veery, white-breasted nuthatch, catbird -- all heard and tallied in my head as MH and I slowly stepped downhill.

He carries a stick wherever we happen to hike, even on a flat, paved trail, because of his knees, girth and fear of falling down. On this particular trip I left my stick at home, but I have had more than my share of falls, one of them on another trail at this same park, and so I walked slower than usual, avoiding the rocks, roots and areas where runoff from recent rain made the ground almost too smooth.

"There's a peewee," he called from behind me. "There it goes again."

I didn't hear it. 

It called about a dozen or so times, he told me. With all the birds that I could hear, it rankled me I could not hear this bird, whose call ("pee-oh-wee!) is its name. It is a thin and high-pitched call. 

This is not the first time he has heard a bird I did not. This has happened several times with the peewee alone. Unless the bird is close to where I am standing, I am not hearing it.

I don't like this high-frequency problem, another in a series of ailments that affects my birding and my aging life in general.

Like others of my generation, too much loud music heard at concerts or through headphones has damaged my hearing. According to the people who make hearing aids, 48 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss. If I can't hear higher pitches, there will be some birds with faint, high calls (Cape May warbler, Blackburnian warbler, the aforementioned peewee) I won't hear. Rather than call it "deafness" or "approaching old age," I call this condition "birder's ear."

But wait, there's more. Hearing problems can also affect balance, something you need if you are going to hike in the woods alone. Aging knees are a problem when hiking up and down hills, frequently over rough terrain, and there are many trails we now don't hike anymore as a result. I have met people who watch for birds from the comfort of their cars so they don't put pressure on their legs. They won't see as much but they are content with what they can find.

(RE Berg-Andersson)

I am not,. I always want to find more birds so I need my hearing. Long ago I realized that once trees leafed out I was never going to see all the birds calling around me. I would have to learn their songs. Since then I have refined that to learn tones so I can tell, for instance, the buzzy trill of the worm-eating warbler from the dry trill of the chipping sparrow and from the sweeter trill of the pine warbler. Although each bird has a different type of favored habitat, there are occasions when these overlap, such as the time I was in one park that had pines (pine warbler), fields (chipping sparrow) and brushy hillsides (worm-eating warbler) and I heard each bird singing.

So if I can't hear a call as easy to identify as a peewee's, I wondered, what else am I missing?

Busy birders such as me also get sore arms from poling ourselves along the trail, aching ankles if they are not braced and sore knees from walking for miles, especially around water or mud. And that workout includes standing still. Try standing in one place without making a sound for more than five minutes. (I find my stick very good to lean on.) It all starts to add up after a while.

Same with another condition that afflicts we of a certain level of age and experience: "warbler neck."

I consider myself to be in decent physical shape. I exercise and try to control my eating. For me, birding is a way of getting out of the house, away from stress and into nature. It also allows me to test my memory and keep my brain sharp. I never thought of it as exercise for those, like MH, who don't do a lot of physical activities. But it is, and no less an authority than Prevention Magazine recommends it for the sedentary. 

In the field (Margo D. Beller)

Of course, as in all exercise, no pain, no gain. And while I have seen a lot of birds in my time, they have recently become a pain in the neck. Literally. 

You look in the treetops for little birds flitting around and there is a ping that, after continued use, becomes painful enough to make turning your head hard to do. This is another reason I have been using my ears instead of my eyes. My bad posture doesn't help. Nor does wearing heavy, 10x50 binoculars. Neck pain prompted me to switch from the usual strap to a harness that spreads the weight over my back and shoulders. But a strap still presses on the shoulder near the base of the sore left side of my neck.

The National Audubon Society, knowing a trend when it sees one, has an article that not only lists the best exercises to help your warbler neck but provides a YouTube exercise video and a helpful list of "jams" to help you bust a neck move. 

MH likes to remind me birding is supposed to be fun. It is. As long as it remains so I'll put up with the ailments and, by extension, the aging. After all, consider the alternative.

Summer of My Discontent (Squirrel Division)

Apple season is nearly over and the only fruit still on the tree is way at the top, where I can't reach it even with my extension pole. However, the gray squirrels have no problem. They climb the main trunk to a branch, then carefully go along until they reach an apple. If the thin branch bends too far and they could fall and break a leg, they leave the fruit alone. At least for the moment.

I watch them do this from my porch and find myself developing a begrudging admiration for Sciurus carolinsis, even as it wreaks havoc throughout my backyard.

"Eastern Gray Squirrel" by DFChurch is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

According to the "Mammals of North America" field guide (Kenn Kaufman is one of its authors), the Eastern gray squirrel has a varied diet that includes fruit, nuts, bird eggs, tree buds, insects, even carrion. "As many people have learned, these squirrels are also very good at raiding bird feeders," the authors add with droll understatement.

Well, duh.

Thanks to the squirrels, I've finally taken in my last feeder for the summer. Either the recent heavy rains pushed down the protective baffle to a height where the squirrels could jump on it, or a squirrel that wanted some food ASAP managed to grab the edge and pull the baffle down. Whatever happened, I went out one morning with the feeder for the cardinal family and a short time later looked out and couldn't understand why it was at such a strange angle... until I saw the two squirrels on it. Out I went and in came the feeder. No more summer feeding. 

The cardinals came and looked for the seed but flew off. I am presuming the young cardinal following its parents can now feed itself because I no longer hear it begging. The male still flies to the feeder pole every so often as a perch to scan for insects below and I feel a twinge of guilt. 

Meanwhile, the squirrels climb the apple tree almost as fast as I can pick up partially eaten apples in my bucket, dump them in a far corner and then go back inside. If I am not fast enough to pick up this fruit, the deer come to finish it off. Judging from all the deer poop I shoveled up the other day so MH could mow the area, I haven't been very fast. 

Apples and nest box (Margo D. Beller)

So I started racing the squirrels for apples by whacking the branches with the extension pole. I know the apple tree wasn't pleased but it was me or the squirrels. So far I have made six pints of apple sauce and one apple cobbler. 

However, the decline in remaining apples comes too late for the house wrens, which deserted the nest box. The combination of too many hungry squirrels in the tree and my being out there with my stick, albeit as far from the nest box as possible, was too much for the wren pair, which would scold me even if I just stood under the tree. 

One morning I went out with my bucket and found the box turned around after a night of heavy rain. I turned it back and saw the opening was filled with nesting material, so much I could not imagine how even something as small as a house wren could get in there to tend to young. I left it alone. Over the next few days I would hear a wren sing as close as a yard away, but nothing came to the apple tree. Finally, I pulled some of the material out of the box. No peeping chicks. No smell of rotting eggs. A few days later I took down the box and cleared it. Many twigs, a few feathers, even a bit of plastic. No eggs. I re-hung the box and now hope for another wren pair in my yard that won't be as jinxed as the last pair.

So that's the havoc. Where does the squirrel admiration come in?

How squirrels adapt (Margo D. Beller)

These rats with bushy tails are survivors. When we have a hard winter with a lot of ice-covered snow and the squirrels can't reach their buried stores, they devise rather interesting ways to get to the feeders if the birds don't drop seeds fast enough. I've written about the really bad winter where squirrels used the accumulated snowpack as a springboard to vault the baffle and grab the "anti-squirrel" cage of the feeders. One squirrel, I discovered, tried to gnaw through the metal bars (the green plastic that keeps the bars from rusting was gone) and then tried to pull the bars apart to stick its head inside. (How it would've gotten past the plastic tube I don't know but I'm sure it would've, somehow.)

Squirrels are smart. They know they can't get behind my deer netting (unlike the smaller chipmunks, alas) because they might not be able to make a clean getaway if I suddenly show up. Do a search under "squirrel feeder videos" and you are likely to find both videos from the makers of these "squirrel-proof" feeders and the people who were greatly entertained watching the squirrels attempt to get food from them. But these feeders don't stop squirrels, they only slow them down (as my picture above shows). 

There is always one particularly smart squirrel that vexes me by its acrobatics even as I admire its abilities. According to MH, who once raised gerbils, the smart squirrel is likely a female that does what she must because she is "eating for six," i.e. pregnant. 

There was the squirrel I found grasping a screen on my enclosed porch and then, after much calculation, jumping across to one of the feeders. There was the squirrel that figured out it could climb the pear tree to jump to the porch roof and go after the acorns other squirrels were dropping from the oak trees above. There are also the stupid squirrels that are hawk or owl food or suddenly run out in front of your car and become roadkill. They will scamper along power lines or even gnaw on them, electrocuting themselves and creating a power outage.

There are regions where people still hunt squirrels but in urban areas such as Central Park, gray squirrels have become used to being fed by humans. In my backyard squirrels dig many holes to bury nuts for winter or dig up other squirrels' nuts to eat. They can do a lot of digging, including in my unnetted flower beds. They might even climb into your house attic.

If humans want to take their picture and feed them peanuts from their hands, the squirrels won't mind. If I am stupid enough to put out a feeder at a time when most birds aren't as interested in sunflower seeds, squirrels will take things into their own paws.

Apple season is just about over. Acorn season is around the corner. So is squirrel birthing season. Joy.

Home, Sweet Nest

There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. 
-- Henry David Thoreau

I recently finished re-reading Bob Levy's 2006 book about Central Park, its birds and the people who look for them, "Club George." George was the name given to a male red-winged blackbird that was not shy about taking food from human hands. 

Robin nest placed on stairs to an observation deck, 2019
(Margo D. Beller)

Rather than focusing on the birds migrating through this urban oasis in the spring, which is what I do when I visit Central Park, he is more interested in the birds that stay in the park to nest and raise young during the summer. Among the nests he visited on his daily rounds were those of a pair of cardinals, cedar waxwings and several green herons besides monitoring "George's Pond" for signs of young redwings in a number of nests in the tall reeds. His greatest frustration was in not being able to see the chicks. Until the young became big enough to stand up (in the case of the herons) or stick their heads up to be fed (in the case of the other birds), he could not see what was happening in the nest.

I know that frustration.

Somewhere in one of my hedges was the nest where the cardinal pair raised their one surviving chick this year. I know that somewhere in another hedge on the other side of the yard are possibly two catbird nests. 

There are people who like to find active nests and take their pictures. I don't go looking for the nests, although sometimes I find them when the parent bird catches my attention and leads me there. The smallest such nest was the hummingbird nest in a small branch hanging over a brook a few years ago. The largest was the red-tailed hawk nest I found in a tree over a backstreet in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, the year I worked in the area.

Red-tailed hawk on nest, 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

Closer to home, watering one of my bushes at the side of the house, a catbird flew up. Something made me look in back and there on a branch was its mate, steadfastly sitting on her eggs in a woven nest. For the rest of the summer I watered there only when I had to until the birds fledged. That was the last year a nest was built in that particular area.

Robins have the habit of building a lot of "dummy" nests to fool potential predators. I watched a robin build one at the top of the pear tree. The robin sat in it for so long I thought it was a real nest. But one day the bird left and the nest later blew down. There were no eggs in it. Another year a robin put another nest in my spruce tree. I have found robin nests in really strange places, such as on stairs leading to an observation deck and at eye level in trees off heavily traveled foot paths. Recently I went on a hike and a couple of shrieking robins alerted me to their nest in which were two young. When I next checked the area 12 days later, the nest was there but the birds were gone. According to Cornell's Ornithology Lab, the nesting period for robins is 13 days.

Much-photographed wren nest box (Margo D. Beller)

The nest I know best is the wooden box I put into the apple tree every year for the house wrens. However, even though I know where the nest will be, I know little of what goes on inside. Not knowing if there was a viable nest for the longest time was particularly vexing for me this year, although now, judging by the birds' behavior, there has to be a brood. 

I have thought about getting one of those tiny cameras that would fit in the box. Birdcams have become as ubiquitous as the surveillance cameras recording we humans on the streets of major cities or the selfies I see people taking everywhere. Everyone wants to see a picture or, better yet, a video of young birds squished together sleeping or fighting each other to get the regurgitated food from their arriving parent's mouth or, in the case of raptors, whole birds, mammals or fish for them to rip apart. Gross but fascinating.

Viral house wrens? Perhaps next year. For now, I continue to listen for peeping young inside the box. 

A Delicate Dance Around the Apple Tree

I was so hoping the cool, wet spring would keep the squirrels hydrated so they would not need to climb into my apple tree and start eating. But no. The first spate of sunny, warm days and they were in there, even though to me the fruit was not large or ripe enough. But to squirrels, apples of any type are a temptation at this time of year.

The first of this year's apples (Margo D. Beller)

And so over the last few days I have been outside either picking up usable dropped apples or picking what I can reach. Most of these apples are not ripe but when I cook them with enough sugar they will taste just fine as apple sauce.

Most apples can be picked in the fall. This tree has always bloomed in the late spring. When I first realized these apples were sweet and thus edible, they would ripen red. I took one to the manager of a farm market near me and he said it was a type of Macintosh. All I knew was of the five apple trees planted by the previous owner of my home, this one had usable apples. (The other four trees have since been removed.)

The problem is the house wren box, which prompts me to do a delicate dance when it comes to gathering the apples. I hang it in the apple tree. When I get too close to the box, one of the wrens starts to fuss, either from high in the tree or from a nearby bush. On occasion both adults scold because I am too close. I had hoped that by standing under the tree when the apples were first appearing the birds would get used to my presence. Perhaps it has worked, as long as I stay away from the box.

Apple tree with this year's crop and house wren box (Margo D. Beller)

In past years, the squirrels didn't start hitting the tree in droves (the record is six at once) until late June or even early July. Some years the tree provides a meager harvest while others there is too much. This year, based on the number of blossoms that bloomed for over a week this spring, looks like it is in-between.

Under the late June-early July scenario, the house wrens were usually done with their brood and they, and young, would have left for larger quarters (such as a nearby hedge) before separating and flying south. But this year with all the drama over whether there would even be a wren family, the nesting started later than usual.

So thanks in part to the increasing global warming affecting even my part of the U.S., my yard has a bad combination of late nesting and early apple picking.

There are two other figures in this dance: deer and birds. Squirrels are sloppy eaters, I've found. If they take an apple and run off to a safe location, I'm ok with that. But when they eat in the tree there is a likelihood part of that apple will end up on the ground. That is particularly true when I go out to shoo them away. Unless I pick up those apple parts and either throw them in a corner of the yard or put them in the garbage, the deer will stop by and eat this free food. I know this because they leave lots of calling cards.

As for the birds, some, like American crows, like to eat fruit but in my experience most of the time a bird will peck into the apple to draw insects to it or to get at any insects already inside. I don't spray the tree, so when I do use the apples I have to cut off a goodly amount of them to make sure that, at minimum, I'm not mixing a worm into my apple sauce.

Feeding the young in 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

So once again I will be stiffly going outside early in the morning and then perhaps again at dusk to retrieve any fallen apples. Many are the times I've picked up a pail's worth of apples and maybe one-third of them have not been partially eaten or pecked. When the wren young have left the nest I will take out my long stick and start whacking the tree for the apples in the mid level while the squirrels go after the ones in the highest branches I can't reach. They can have those.

The good news is, this madness should be over in about 10 days and the cooking will begin sooner than that. In the meantime, I'll be trying to disturb the house wren family-in-the-making as little as possible.

Watching for Hummingbirds

This post is based on one that originally ran on May 29, 2013, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

I hear like you see — like that hummingbird outside that window, for instance.
– Ray Charles

This morning (Sunday) a Ruby-throated Hummingbird hovered over the feeder briefly, then flew into the nearby apple tree. It did not return while I sat on my porch with my binoculars.

Another year's backyard hummer. (Margo D. Beller)

For my yard, this is typical. Every year the hummingbirds visit infrequently in late spring, then more regularly in late June into July when the female, which does all the work feeding the young, stops for a sip of sugar water so she has the energy to find insects to feed her chicks. 

When I hang the seed feeders, I know a host of different birds will come to eat all year long. But the sugar water feeder is meant for only one type of bird that visits over the summer, and the food can go bad quickly in the heat. I have a pole in a shady area but I can't see the feeder from the kitchen, unlike the seed feeder poles. 

My brother-in-law, noted below, has no trouble drawing these tiny colorful birds to his feeders. But even he has been known to complain about the "waste" of having to dump nearly full feeders when the sugar water has gone bad:

It is dusk in New Hampshire. It is raining and unusually cold for late May and I am sitting on my brother-in-law’s wide, covered porch.

As it darkens, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird comes to one of the two feeders hung from a support for the grape vines. It perches and takes a long drink of the sugar water that will help keep it alive over the expected cold night.

A second, slightly larger hummer arrives. Despite two feeders being out, this one chases the other away because this is what hummingbirds do, they battle each other for food and territory. These little birds are tough. The first one leaves and the second takes a long drink, then perches for a while until it gets almost too dark to see. Then it flies off to roost in a nearby sheltering willow.

(Margo D. Beller)

I am always taken aback when a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, looking more like a bug than bird, flits by me. They are fascinating to watch, the only bird that can fly backwards, bright green back, long bill and, if a mature male, a deep, red throat. John J. Audubon referred to the Ruby-throat as the “glittering fragment of the rainbow.”

Hummingbirds are so small - they weigh the same as a penny - and so colorful. In the U.S. they have interesting names including Broad-billed, Broad-tailed, Anna’s, Allen’s, Calliope and Magnificent. But in New Jersey, the hummingbird you’ll see 99% of the time is the Ruby-throated. Go walk in the woods wearing a red hat or bandana and you might draw one to you, checking out what kind of flower you are.

People love to watch hummingbirds. They put out red feeders with sugar water (1 part sugar to 4 parts water) to feed them. They plant flowers for them – preferably those that are red and/or trumpet-shaped (yellow jewelweed is a favorite, if you happen to have a stream or river along your property). They make documentaries about them. There’s even websites to track the Ruby-throat’s northbound migration.

One year I was in New Jersey’s Great Swamp, crossing a bridge over a brook, when I was buzzed by a hummer that flew to a tiny nest made of lichen and spider webs at the tip of a thin branch hanging over the water, a good defense against predators. This was a female: Once the male has done his part, he’s gone, frequently heading south as early as July, leaving the female to build the nest and raise the brood alone.

New Jersey Audubon’s Scherman Hoffman sanctuary has a feeder attached to the bookstore window so those inside get a close view of the feeding bird. It is nice to be inside, perhaps talking to sanctuary director Mike Anderson or one of the volunteers, and suddenly have a brilliantly colored male hummer appear out of nowhere. Very little deters a hungry hummingbird, as the ones I saw in New Hampshire reminded me.

When I see a hummer at a feeder, its whirring wings beating thousands of times a second, I appreciate the great lengths it has gone - and the dangers it has faced - to make it here from central and South America.

In his book “The Big Year,” Mark Obmascik gives a harrowing account of northbound migration over the Gulf of Mexico, from the point of view of a female Ruby-throat. Like all birds the hummer eats and eats and eats, then takes off and flies nonstop over the water, burning fat supplies as she goes until she can get to land to eat and rest. Many don’t make it. The one in the book does. Read it and I guarantee the next time you look at a hummingbird you will be awed.

If you want to attract hummingbirds you can create a garden with the right type of flowers. Trumpet Vine is a hummer favorite, and so are other native plants including Beard Tongue, Wild Bergamont and Bleeding Heart. If you have a wet garden, there’s Fire Pink and Cardinal Flower and its blue cousin Lobelia.

The nice thing about these flowers is that besides hummers you will also draw butterflies – another long-distance migrant that is tougher than it appears. These plants evolved along with native birds, insects and wildlife. Putting these in your garden is like buying heirloom tomatoes with their strange colors and textures and juicy taste instead of the bland orange tomatoes used for fast-food sandwiches. Natives are just more interesting, and so are the birds and insects they attract.

Hummer at a friend's feeder (Margo D. Beller)

Here is Audubon on hummingbirds and native flowers:

No sooner has the returning sun again introduced the vernal season, and caused millions of plants to expand their leaves and blossoms to his genial beams, than the little Humming-bird is seen advancing on fairy wings, carefully visiting every opening flower-cup, and, like a curious florist, removing from each the injurious insects that otherwise would ere long cause their beauteous petals to droop and decay... Its long delicate bill enters the cup of the flower, and the protruded double-tubed tongue, delicately sensible, and imbued with a glutinous saliva, touches each insect in succession, and draws it from its lurking place, to be instantly swallowed. All this is done in a moment, and the bird, as it leaves the flower, sips so small a portion of its liquid honey, that the theft, we may suppose, is looked upon with a grateful feeling by the flower, which is thus kindly relieved from the attacks of her destroyers.

Makes you want to go native and plant a few Fire Pinks, doesn’t it?

I get a grateful feeling about hummingbirds, too.