Hi Tweets,

I've always assumed (and I'm pretty sure I've read it somewhere) that
after raising the broods in the lowlands, many Rufous Hummingbirds move
into mountains to take advantage of later flower blooms at higher
altitudes. Perhaps this is where some of the local hummers have gone (at
least for those of us living near the coast).

Locally (Delta BC, right by the border) the males show up in mid-March,
females in early April, and nesting is usually finished by mid-June at the
latest and then they disappear for the rest of the summer--breeding
coincides exactly with salmonberry blooms.

Kyle Elliott
Delta BC

On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Rob Saecker wrote:

>
> >On 26 Jun 00, at 13:04, Blake Iverson wrote:
> >
> >
> >> The reason your hummers left Jacki is because they are nesting
> >>and if
> >> they have young they switch from nector to insects. They do feed on both but
> >> insects are a big part of the diet for the young, nutrition etc. Don't
> >>worry,
> >> they'll be back in a month or so.
>
> Tweets,
>
> the above comment doesn't quite fit what's going on with rufous hummers, at
> least in my neck of the woods. According to Ehrlich et al in The Birder's
> Handbook, a rufous hummer incubates eggs for twelve to fourteen days, and
> the birds fledge after another twenty days. So it takes roughly a month to
> get the kids out the door. Hummers arrive here in mid-March (the 20th this
> year), and even if they take a month to set up shop and get down to
> business, by the end of May, they've fledged. The Handbook also says that
> they will occasionally have two broods; I'm inclined to think that the
> dominant female here did that this year, but those birds fledged last week,
> and this week things are pretty quiet. That's the usual pattern here; by
> July the hummers are done and gone. Rufous hummers are already showing up
> in Arizona, btw, on their way south.
>
> Another observation: the birds never completely stop coming to the feeders
> here, even at the height of breeding. Traffic drops off noticably, but they
> still come, just less frequently.
>
> It's fascinating that Jacki writes that hummers don't show up in
> Woodinville until May, and then stay until August; I can only guess at
> what's happening there. Two possibilities occur to me: either they've
> already bred elsewhere, and have moved there to have a second brood, or
> they're all migrants and aren't breeding there at all. I'd like to hear
> from anyone who has additional insights...
>
> Rob Saecker
> Olympia, WA
> rsaecker at thurston.com
>
>