Volunteers Needed!

Activity is definitely increasing, and I am starting to see some juveniles (and a couple of juvie-juvie chases). I think these were born locally, because it's very unlikely that juveniles would already be migrating from further north. Here's a couple of not very good photos (with my $100 Walmart camera) I took this evening. The first shows a bird approaching coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens), which is a superb hummer vine that flowers early (late may) and keeps blooming through the summer.

The next shows a hummer approaching Salvia guarantica.

And in the third image, the hummer is visiting Salvia greggii, with S guarantica nearby.

And now, to business. We are going away for a few days in the second half of july and need help at the sanctuary with a couple of chores: (1) replenishing empty feeders (2) watering plants, especially in pots. Even if you can only visit once, it will help, though you would also need to visit during the coming week, for instructions etc. If you can help out, please send me an email (paul.adams&stonybrook.edu, where you must substitute @ for &). I think there will be quite a bit of activity in later july, and you can certainly bring your camera, and enjoy the birds, as long as you do a bit to help. You will also enjoy a magnificent display of crocosmia "Lucifer" and "Hyperion" day lilies.

Where to Get Hummingbird Plants

Here's a picture I took last year.  It shows a hummer approaching a red Salvia greggii blossom, with bog sage and Salvia "Van Houttei" in the background, and LI Sound behind.

Perhaps the best source for hummingbird plants on Long Island is a small specialist outlet called, appropriately, Long Island Hummingbird Plants.  They are conveniently located near exit 64 of the LIE, in a very nice part of Medford, at the end of a quiet cul de sac. I visited them recently, and saw that they still have an excellent selection of the best hummer-plants, including S. involucrata, S. guaranitica, Stachytarpheta mutabilis (pink porterweed), Mina lobata and cardinal vines, and Odontonema (firespike). The owner, Bill, is enthusiastic, knowledgeable and helpful. He also has feeders, and, most important, feeder cleaning tools. You will also see a lot of superb hummer-friendly plants growing well. He gets lots of visits from avian clients, mostly in august and september, proving that almost anywhere on LI you can attract these remarkable birds.

I''ll end up with another video, taken recently at the sanctuary. It shows the resident male on his favorite perch. Note the forked tail and the dark chin-gorget. He is constantly on the look-out for intruders. Near the end of the video (at 1.04) he briefly opens his beak, probably to emit a warning squeak. It's too high-frequency for me to hear, but listen careful to the soundtrack and let me know if you here something. 

Stolen Pictures

My title does not refer to art heists, like the one at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. It refers instead to the following image, which I have stolen from the wonderful blog "A Long Island Summer in Pictures". It was taken at the sanctuary last year. You can see a lot of other excellent photos at the blog (look for the december 5 2012 post to see more taken at the sanctuary. The blog is written by an excellent artist - you can see a lot more of her work here. The hummer is feeding at Salvia involucrata, and the blues flowers are S. uliginosa.

I post this stolen image (thanks, Judi, and apologies) because I seem not to have seen the sun here for weeks - it has been very wet, as you know, and the few sunny days we mostly spent in Cape Elizabeth, Maine (where we got to visit the private Cushing Island, in Casco Bay).
The next picture is anticlimactic,  but was taken this year at the sanctuary. It shows the female hummer who is occasionally visiting.

Today I went to Homeside Florist (on Route 25 just east of Riverhead) and purchased a couple of nice shrimp plants and a firespike (Odontonema stricta). I have a second firespike that survived the winter inside at our Stony Brook house. Firespike was a great success with the hummers last year. Homeside did have numerous blue porterweeds, Stachytarpheta indica, but this is much less good than the purple and pink porterweeds S. franzii and mutabilis, which I could not find at the Peconic River Herb Farm either.

Bathing Beauty

All being well, we will open aug 1, and many subsequent days in august - details will be posted at this blog. I have been too busy to post recently, but I wanted to share with you the above video. So far this summer I am seeing an adult male hummingbird quite frequently, but only very briefly each time - he is patrolling his territory (the sanctuary) and checking the nectar in flowers and feeders. I also see a female several times a day. But both have been very difficult to photograph. However as I was watering the other day, the male came to bathe on a wet leaf. You can see him in the video, moving around a lot on the leaf, and some drops of water flying about from the sprinkler. Sometimes his red gorget flashes. The movie only lasts about 16 secs (he was bathing for about a minute before I could get my camera), and toward the end he suddenly takes off. This bathing technique is quite typical - they choose a concave wet leaf near splashing water, and delightedly rub their bodies in this tiny bathtub.
I have only seen one mating dance so far this year. I did not get a video but you can see one from last year under the post for july 11 2012 - see here:

Here to end with is a recent photo of one of the Sanctuary's climbing roses ("Etain", an old-fashioned variety), with LI Sound in the background. More posts and updates coming soon....

The Owl and the Pussy-cat

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea     In a beautiful pea green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money,     Wrapped up in a five pound note. - Edward Lear Yesterday, as I watched the sunset here in Baiting Hollow, a Great Horned Owl landed on the top of a pine a short distance down on the bluff; he was silhouetted against the pink fading light, a very large bird, though his weight did not seem to bend the topmost branch. He seemed to watch and listen to me for a minute. But then quite unexpectedly, and almost equally rarely, a cat came round the corner of the front cabin, and soon the owl took off. Of course I was reminded of Lear's famous poem. I know there is a Great Horned Owl in the woods behind me, but I've never seen one on the bluff before. I saw a male hummingbird perching on a branch near the rear cabin almost immediately on my arrival here last sunday. I see him occasionally several times a day as he does the rounds of his feeders, never lingering unnecessarily. I've only seen a female once - she lingered at a feeder but then sped back, presumably to her nest. I'll post pictures soon. In the mean time, here's a snap of one of the beautiful places we visited in North Carolina on our way back north, Hope Plantation near Edenton.

Back on Long Island

We got back to Long Island this afternoon - to the winter we thought we left behind 5 months ago! Until yesterday we have had temperatures in the eighties during the 9-day drive up the east coast, dropping to 60 this morning in Delaware, but now in the mid-forties. I want to go back!

Our beach in Eleuthera - I'm in the water taking the picture a few days before we left.

Yesterday we visited Southampton Place, near Edenton, N.C., and the day before that Tryon Palace garden (New Bern) and Hope Plantation (Windsor), both also in North Carolina.  After driving up the Delmarva peninsula with the intention of taking the Lewes-Cape May ferry (ultimate goal Leaming's Run hummingbird garden), we arrived at the terminal only to learn that all crossings were cancelled because of "high winds" (actually, only 17 mph at Cape May, according to weather.com). So we re-routed north towards the dreaded I-95, and were able to visit another plantation on the way, the Dickinson House (near Dover, Delaware). At least the traffic was light all the way to Stony Brook (but Christian Ave was the worst surface we encountered in 9 days of back roads and country lanes, including the road to Calypso on Eleuthera). I'll be posting pictures soon. Tomorrow I will check out and report on the situation in Baiting Hollow. In the meantime here are a few more images from our recent northern progress.

A manatee at Homosassa Springs, Florida west coast.

On our balcony overlooking the Homosassa River.

Micanopy, Fl (near Gainesville)

The remote Cross Creek home of Marjorie Kennan Rawlings (author of "The Yearling"); her front porch writing desk (near Miconopy).

Headed to lunch at Crane House, Jekyll Island.

The Crane Courtyard Cafe; our table was just to the right of the fountain, under the cloister and next to a wonderfully fragrant confederate jasmine vine.

Here are some more photos from the journey north. The one above shows me in the garden at "El Retiro", the former name of what is now Pinewood Estate, part of Bok Tower Gardens. Bok was a publisher and Buck, who built "El Retiro" was a vice president at Bethlehem Steel, back when american steel was big. And below I'm admiring a tree fern at Bok Tower.

Nearly Home!

We left Eleuthera may 16. The photo shows our plane and the northern part of the island.

We  moved slowly through Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, and are nearly back on Long Island. One of our most interesting stops was at Bok Tower Gardens, in Lake Wales (south-central Florida, east of Tampa). You can see the tower above - 205 feet high atop 300 foot Iron Mountain, the highest spot in Florida (particularly striking because the approaches are so low and flat). Here are a few images from the garden, the first showing Claire under a live oak branch (my favorite tree and person in the world).

   

 

Leaving Eleuthera

Here's the front porch at our southern home, Calypso, overlooking the Atlantic ocean.

And here's why we go there:

Soon on the way back

We will shortly be wending our way back to Long Island from our winter refuge in the Bahamas, on Eleuthera. But already volunteers are hard at work at the hummingbird sanctuary maintaining feeders and starting to tame the overgrown gardens. In the next few days I will be posting some recent photos of the gardens at Calypso, our Eleuthera home. Then I will start posting updates about the Hummingbird Sanctuary in Baiting Hollow, which will be opening Aug 1.
The above photo shows a patch of heliconias, with a ti plant (reddish leaves) on the left, and a coconut pal behind. The photo below shows a small part of the Rockery, with Aechmea blanchetiana (orange leaves), blue plumbago, a buccanneer palm, pink bougainvillea and oleander, and a ruellia blossom.