Maybe the first thing we think of at this time of year is breaking out the hummingbird feeders. In this part of North America – in fact, pretty much anywhere east of the Mississippi watershed – ruby-throated hummingbirds are the sole breeding species. They have arrived from the south after spending the winter anywhere from Central America to southern Mexico. Some flew non-stop over the Gulf of Mexico, quite a feat for a bird weighing in around 3.5 grams. They are here to nest and raise their young.
They will sample all sorts of flowers – red or orange preferred – but are never averse to a reliable source of fast food. Hummingbird nectar is easily made adding a quarter cup of plain table sugar to one cup of water. Feeders usually have red plastic ports so food coloring is unnecessary, and may even be bad for them. It’s much more important to keep the nectar fresh, changing it daily in hot weather to avoid poisonous fermentation. A good guideline is to put out only what will be consumed in a day. With their long, probing bills and even longer flexible tongues, they can easily reach it at the bottom of the container.
Hummingbirds are festy critters, and will defend a territory, chasing off interlopers. To attract a mate, males fly in a pendulum-like pattern, swinging back and forth in the air below a perch. When a female arrives, a male zips back and forth alongside her, impressing her with his flight skills. Females build a tiny nest of moss and grasses woven together with spider silk and decorated with lichens. Their camouflage is excellent, so spotting a nest isn’t easy. Once the two eggs are laid females do all the work. Males do not play any part in family life after breeding.
Some bird-lovers stop feeding in summer, but with Nantucket’s ocean-cooled late spring, feeders are still as much a welcome supplement for the birds as their color is a boost for us, brightening a soggy, foggy day. The winter staple, black-oil sunflower seed, is still a good basic choice if you are only putting out one offering.
How could we ever get tired of looking at chickadees? They are so pert, quick and almost balletic as they change places in the queue. Northern cardinals also love the seed. It is fun to watch cardinal courtship, as the male offers a tidbit to his mate. Of course, drama is never absent if there’s a dispute, and two males get into a feather-flying dust-up.
Greedy grackles are some people’s pet aversion, but with their metallic, iridescent colors they are undeniably pretty, in moderation. The same goes for red-winged blackbirds, the males with their bright red, yellow-lined epaulets. Females almost look like a different species, but their pale peach throats have a beauty of their own.
But in many ways the rulers of the back yard – and sometimes the front yard as well – are the Blue Jays. They are tough enforcers, not above chasing away or even killing a smaller bird. Often one will keep watch aloft while one or two vacuum up anything dropped on the ground. They also have an easy method of getting the place to themselves: they do a great red-tailed hawk call imitation, which pretty well clears the room.
Red-tails are not particularly predators of small birds at the feeders. They are more likely to pick up a lunch of road-kill from the street. But their call does serve as a sort of hawk-alarm that sends the hoi polloi away, at least temporarily.
The true predators of the bird feeders are Cooper’s hawks, however. They are wily and hungry, but not always successful consumers of smaller birds. Some people get upset with a neighborhood hawk, but they are useful in cleaning up rodents, too, and birds have to learn to deal with them. So, Edith Andrews (my mother) when asked what to do about a pesky Coop would say, “enjoy the hawk.” Truth be told, their favorite food seems to be mourning dove, a reasonably plentiful resource.
American goldfinches have molted out of winter mufti and are now in full breeding plumage, although they tend to be late nesters. They time their nesting activity to the bloom of thistles, using thistle-down for their nests. Thistle seed is a favorite food, whether found in the wild or in a tube.
Other thistle-seed afficionados are the house finches. Once called “Hollywood finches” for their western origin and sweet singing, they were imported to East Coast pet shops as cage birds. Later released into the wild, they quickly took over. But we still see a few of the native purple finches at our feeders.
This is a particularly good time to think about appealing to the returning migrants who have been noshing on fruit all winter in the tropics. Orange halves or dishes of grape jelly attract Baltimore orioles, as well as gray catbirds, and stray warblers and finches like them too. Who knows, even a scarlet tanager might drop in.
Suet is just as welcome in summer as in winter, and attracts downy or red-bellied woodpeckers, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, even Carolina wrens or the occasional pine warbler. But if the woodpeckers start to look a bit greasy – that sort of matted, oily look – it might be time to pull the plug and let them find their own wild food in the grubs that live in and under the bark of dead trees.
Perhaps as weather warms and things dry out, the most important back-yard bird resource is water. A birdbath with fresh water for drinking and bathing is a great accessory to feeding. But as with nectar, it is a good idea to make sure the water gets changed daily. The highly contagious avian influenza (HPAI) has been found on Nantucket, and the remedy is sanitation.
There is still a lot to learn about it. It is not readily transmissible to humans, but is a concern for chickens, turkeys and other domestic birds. To be on the safe side, clean bird feeders weekly and make sure water is fresh daily.
