Fred Flashes again; what's in bloom at the sanctuary; where to get hummingbird plants.

Here are a couple of recent clips of Fred perching and flashing. I've seen several more mating dances, though none to match the one I filmed a few days ago. Suzy is coming up from the bluff face to feeders near the bluff edge. Fred has a favorite perch at the very top of a dead maple, partly hidden behind the top of an oak that's rapidly unfurling its leaves. From this spot he can survey both the western valley and some of the feeders near the cabins. However the closest I can get is 40 feet away, and even with the 60 X zoom I now have, I cannot film him really close-up - and, as expected, camera shake is an increased problem. In these 2 clips  he was perching closer, though never for long.

There's not much blooming at the moment at the sanctuary: shadbush trees, the sweet-smelling Vibernum carlesii,  bleeding hearts and a few native columbines (Aquilegia canadensis, much more hummer-friendly than the ornamental varieties).  Most of the daffodils have faded, and the lilacs and a large crabapple are just about to flower.

Shadbush (Amelianchier arborea), also known as serviceberry, is quite prolific close to and on the bluff. At this time of year (when the shad run) it's clothed in white. In this movie I zoom out to show the western valley which is rapidly leafing out (already much more than shown here).

 

Bleeding Heart

Vibernum carlesii (Korean Spice Vibernum). Today I saw Fred very briefly trying the flowers of this plant, but obviously not finding much nectar.

However I recently acquired (from B&G nursery in St James) a large blooming Salvia greggii, which I've placed, in its pot, on the edge of the bluff, and is getting quite a few visits, mostly from Fred. The Aesculus carnea gets lot of bees but so far no hummers.

However, the best place to find good (3 star) hummingbird plants on the island is, appropriately, lihummingbirdplants.com. They are conveniently located in Medford - take exit 63 (intersection with route 83) on the LIE. But they are only open by appointment, starting this coming saturday (may 16). Every plants they feature (with cool photos) is an excellent hummer plant! They also have an interesting collection of hummer-related gear. I'll write more about them in a future post.

Lady Di is back!

Some of you may remember that towards the close of last season I was featuring videos of a nesting hummingbird we called "Lady Di" (in honor of Lady Diana Princess of Wales) in Manorville. Dominick reports she appears to be back and has posted the following nice videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW5rGYOGK3A&feature=youtu.be
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmW_nC1triQ&feature=youtu.be

She seems to be lapping up the calories she burned during her long trip back from central America. Let's hope she successfully nests in the same spot as last year (which often happens) or perhaps in an even more visible location. Here are clickable thumbnails of the same vids. Thanks Dominick!

Fred attacks Suzy at the Baiting Hollow sanctuary; visiting procedure

In this recent movie. Fred, the current dominant male at the Baiting Hollow Hummingbird sanctuary, attacks Suzy, an interloper female. Here we see Fred perched at the top of a tree (one of his favorite lookouts), and, zooming out,  the female hummer Suzy (note the throat is light not dark) cautiously approaching a feeder swinging in the wind. But before she starts drinking Fred seems to realize she's there and cruelly attacks (or at least pesters her). Then Suzy rapidly takes off. Of course it's possible that this was merely a prelude to a courtship display; indeed a bit later in the afternoon I did see a courtship display (see my other Youtube vids), though I don't know that involved the same birds shown here. It's rather lucky that at the crucial attack moment, the wind swings the feeder to the right, revealing Fred. 4X slo mo, 1080P HD

I've updated the right column of this blog to explain how you can visit the sanctuary this year. Please read carefully. It's the same "slot" system as last year. It's a bit of a hassle for all concerned but it does ensure controlled, very limited, traffic on the long private road access to the sanctuary. 

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Plot thickens: there are 3 hummers in the mating dance movie! And a bonus: Fred sticks out his tongue!

On closer study I think there's a lot more going on in this short (7 sec) video than I initially realised. In particular as well as the regular male mating dance passing above the feeder (only the last rightward swing of this dance is shown in this short excerpt from a longer movie, "Hummingbird Mating Dance may 4"), and the departure of the target of the dance, a perching female, there are 2 other events that at first I did not see either on the movie or in real life. First, a hummer (probably Fred, but possibly Pete) makes a further swing below the feeder. Second apparently (see my Youtube commentary) 2 hummers (probably Pete followed very closely by Fred) hurtle towards the feeder but then abruptly change course. These 2 "new" events are more difficult to spot, happen very quickly (much less than 1/4 second!) and really require one to advance the movie frame by frame, or by setting replay at 0.25 speed on Youtube. I've indicated the locations (or location centers) of these events by white boxes, which pop up briefly at the 5 different locations involved.

This is a copy of the previous 7 second (expanded to 30  sec by 4X slo-mo) excerpt "may 4 mating dance female watches male", on which I've superimposed a set of 5 annotation boxes. These white boxes show up at the following approximate times: 1 sec, 3 s, 10s, 16, 28 and show the approximate locations of the following events:
1s: the male (probably Fred) executes a last left-right swing above the female and the feeder, passing rapidly through this box in a right-upward motion
3 s: location of perched female; she shows up as an upward blip on a branch inside the small box (the box unfortunately moves slightly, but the female does not, until much later in the movie (at 28 s, or actually 7 s real-time).
10s Fred does a left-right upward swing just below the feeder, hurtling through this third box.
16 s Pete, rapidly and closely followed (I think) by Fred hurtle from the lower right edge toward the feeder but then abruptly change course near this 4th box, speeding toward the right.
28 s The female, Suzy, leaves her perch, moving down rightward probably to join Fred below the bluff edge.
The events are 10 and 16 seconds happen very quickly and are difficult to spot, but trust me they are there, and you can see them by patiently toggling frame by frame, or by viewing the movie directly on Youtube with a further 0.25 slowing factor.
I suspect that in general a lot more is happening before our very eyes than we suspect: hummers move and react extremely rapidly.

Well that's all rather complicated and professorial, so to end up with I end up with a recent vid of Fred perching and sticking his tongue out at us!

Thrills and Trills: mating dance!

Yesterday around 4 pm I saw my first mating dance of the 2015 season.  I was sitting quietly in the lower garden observing a couple of feeders close to the bluff edge (my slow recovery from pneumonia requires a lot of resting!), when I observed a hummingbird doing his unmistakable "pendulum dance" in and above the wild cherry tree (Prunus serotina) right in front of me. When I realized what was going on I activated the Vixia G30 video camera and pointed it, zoomed out, at the general area of activity. Of course because I have it permanently set up with a 2X digital zoom it cannot capture a very wide field of view, so the video only shows the central, lowest, part of the dance - presumably where the target of the dance, most likely a receptive female, was located. However, I could not spot the female, partly because I, like she, was mesmerised by the dance. The U-shaped arc seemed to go much higher than the tree-top, though I could not follow the complete swing. As he came downward, near the nadir of the dance (close to the presumed female) he emitted a distinct  brief "trilling" sound presumably created by the air rushing through the tail feathers (see http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/01/30_hummingbird.shtml).  Here's the video followed by my Youtube description:-

This movie shows a hummingbird mating dance, at the Baiting Hollow Hummingbird Sanctuary, shot on may 4 2015. The male arrived a week before and established a breeding territory and the female presumably only on may 4. You have to quite carefully to see the male doing his U-shaped "pendulum" dance, and even more closely to see the perched female near the base of his dance (i.e. the bottom of the U). In fact, it's impossible to spot the female, unless you watch carefully near the end where the male does a final close swing, and then, after a short delay, the female takes off to the lower right. In fact, you have to slowly, frame by frame, rewind the movie so you can see the spot where the female starts her rightward departure. Then you realize that the female was perched at that spot throughout the dance, intently turning to follow the male's dance. The movie was shot with the camera "overcranking" - i.e. it's shot at 60 fps for playback at 30 fps, giving a 2X slow motion effect. Because the male, then the female, are moving very rapidly, they shift position from frame to frame very quickly. Unfortunately I don't think standard Youtube allows you to rewind the movie backwards, frame by frame (see Note below), so you can identify the female's takeoff spot. But I can do this using Quicktime, and it's quite clears she is perched at that spot until the point, near the end, where the male's dance stops and she takes off to the lower right. I also show, below, an excerpt from this movie, at 4X slo mo. My Vixia G30 allows overcranking, but unfortunately in this mode the sound is switched off. However I could clearly here a trilling sound that the male emitted (probably using his tail feathers) as he reached the base of his dance and starts to accelerate upwards. 
Added Note: you can add a frame-by-frame advance/rewind app to Google Chrome (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/de...) that will allow you to rewind the video frame by frame from the moment the female takes off to the lower right, so you can find out where exactly she is perching during the male's dance. You can also make out how she moves her head/body while perched to follow the male's dance. Note that she's just a speck in a quite large tree, and it's essential you use the full 1080P HD setting.

Here's the second, 4X slo-mo, excerpt showing the end of the male's dance followed by the female's departure to the lower right.

This is a short extract from the video "hummingbird mating dance may 4", shot at the Baiting Hollow Hummingbird Sanctuary.  It shows the last part of that movie, at 4X slo-mo. The female is perched at the same spot throughout the longer movie, and is turning to follow, with great interest, the "pendulum" mating dance of the male. Then near the end, as the male finishes his dance, she quickly leaves her perch, flying off to the lower right, presumably to where the male is waiting for her. It's almost impossible to spot where she is perching either in the full movie or in this slowed excerpt. You have to look for moment where she suddenly takes off to the lower right, and then rewind the movie slowly backward from that point. You will see exactly where she takes off from, and then you realise that she's actually at that location (but very hard to spot) throughout the excerpt and, I think throughout the full movie (which shows only the second half of the full mating dance). During the filming I could not actually see the female, she's a tiny almost immobile (other than her rapid head-turning to follow the male) dot on a thin branch, and I did not clearly see her rapid departure either.But I suspected that she must have been there, and quite close to the nadir of the dance. Indeed, in this excerpt you can see that the last swing of the male is actually very close to where the female sits, though previous swings were not quite so close. Use this Chrome app to add frame-by-frame advance/reverse to YouTube: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/frame-by-frame-for-youtub/elkadbdicdciddfkdpmaolomehalghio. You can also see the feeder just below where the female is perching. Note that the female takeoff starts during the 29 second of the movie, and the male's last swing is closest to the perching female during the seond second of the movie (i.e. during the frames marked 1). Thus during 28/4 = 7 seconds the female comes to realize that the male has finished his dance and is waiting for her somewhere below the right bottom of the video.

Note that the pendulum dance is also used by hummmingbirds (I think males only) as an aggression display, eg towards immature hummers. However in my experience this is usually a more fragmentary type of dance. I think that in this case it's more likely to be a true courtship display, given the size of the arc covered, the presence of a hummer (most likely a newly arrived adult female) at the nadir of the dance, and above all the trill. However, I did not see the "shuttle dance" that usually follows the courtship pendulum dance, and preceded actual mating - perhaps because this happened somewhere down on the bluff. Let's hope that this courtship was consummated (off-screen, like an old-fashioned Hollywood movie) and that the female successfully nests nearby.  

I will now try to create annotated versions of these 2 videos, pointing out the key features to look at. 

UPDATE: looking at this vid more carefully I see that the male executes one more swing from right to left, at the 10/(4) sec mark. This swing passes below the female, quite close to the feeder, and he disappears below the bluff, to the left of the frame. This explains the otherwise strange lapse of time between what is the penultimate swing above the female and the female's departure to the lower right. Note that the total actual duration of this movie excerpt is around 7 seconds, so there's a lot happening very fast. Also note that in individual frames the moving hummers are blurred because of the relatively slow shutter speed (not sure what the exact speed is because the camera was in Programmed mode; I will try to shoot more video using a fast (eg 1/1000 speed) but of course this demands intense lighting.

Fred shifts position; Aesculus x carnea; visiting this year

Fred, currently the dominant male hummingbird at the Baiting Hollow sanctuary, sits on a twig watching for intruders. Near the start of the movie he shifts his position by 180 degrees, but to do so he uses his wings briefly to lift off and adopt the new stance: hummingbirds cannot walk at all. Indeed when first seen by Europeans they were thought to be legless, and this group (technically an Order, which also includes their close relatives the swifts) is still called the "Apodiformes', which means footless.

 

Aesculus x carnea is a cross between Aesculus pavia (the red buckeye, one of the best hummingbird trees for the North East, and A. hippocastanum, the horse chestnut. It has magnificent spikes of pink flowers which attract bees (you see one in this movie) and, supposedly, hummingbirds. Recently I picked up an A. x carnea at a local nursery. For the moment I will leave it in its pot, positioned in a prominent place where I hope it will attract the attention of Fred, Pete and newly arriving hummers, and earn at least one star in my hummer-friendly rating scale. However I'm not optimistic: the feeders are the only 4-star attraction. 

I've updated the right column of this blog to explain how you can visit the sanctuary this year. Please read carefully. It's the same "slot" system as last year. It's a bit of a hassle for all concerned but it does ensure controlled, very limited, traffic on the long private road access to the sanctuary. 

Fred Flashes Red

Here's Fred, the dominant adult male hummingbird currently in residence at the Baiting Hollow Hummingbird Sanctuary. You can see hints of red on his throat, and at one point he rapidly gobbles an insect. At the end of the movie he leaves his perch and flies down to briefly sample nectar from the nearby feeder. Note that there's another, more timid, adult male around, Pete. No slo-mo.

 

Pete doesn't quite know how my minifeeders work: instead of going straight to the feeding port, which in this case is located on the other side of the feeder (located at the top of the bluff with Long Island Sound below), he's going for the traces of nectar that seep from the cap-feeder junction. You can see his brilliant green back. At the end he quickly dives down the bluff to escape possible attack by Fred, who is zealously guarding all his scattered feeders.

Here we see that Pete, the nondominant male hummer at the Baiting Hollow Hummingbird Sanctuary, has figured out how to use his favorite feeder, located at the bluff edge where he can rapidly scoot down to cover. But he still investigates the entire edge of the cap, not convinced yet that the port is the way to go. Notice that as well as uncertain about the way the feeder should be used, he spends much longer at the feeder than Fred does. Fred just liked to quickly sample, just to check that it's a functioning nectar source which he needs to guard. But now I've got quite a few scattered feeders up, and so he's forced to patrol a larger territory, allowing Pete to sneak in.

Getting more interesting: 2 adult males

Well, it appears that at the moment I'm hosting 2 adult males - a dominant one I will call Fred (since he might be the same one I saw in june last year), and an intruder. The dominant one is spending a lot of time perching near the various feeders I now have scattered around, and attacking the intruder from time to time. This happens very quickly and almost impossible to film. But here is some more footage of Fred perching and feeding.

He's still here! New sharper video

I arrived back at the sanctuary at noon, and immediately saw a male hummer - almost certainly the one I saw on wednesday, at the feeder on the rearmost deck of the back cabin "Hummingbird Cottage" This is always a popular one because it's essentially in the tree tops, despite being only 6 feet above a deck. This feeder was quite low, so I re-filled it. I saw him on the move a couple of times, then around 1.15 pm filmed the following movie (2X slo-mo as usual), which is much better focussed than my last one.

Although I'm still weak, I managed to pick up a couple of interesting hummingbird plants at local nurseries on my way here. More details soon. I'm now going to

Shep Jones Lane on May Day; more hummer arrivals

I went to a faculty meeting at Stony Brook University this morning, partly to test my strength. My colleagues seemed happy to see me alive, and I even managed to chip in a couple of relevant comments. I also renewed my parking garage car and my Stony Brook ID card (and, what's nice they turned out to be one and the same: one less card to carry.) However I grew tired as the morning advanced, and went home for lunch and a nap. I hope to go out to Baiting Hollow tomorrow and shoot some decent video of "my" hummingird, assuming he's still there as I think he will be.

But in the afternoon I went for a very short walk along Shep Jones Lane and the surrounding fields of Avalon Preserve - an absolutely beautiful spot just 5 minutes away from our house by car. My most dedicated readers may remember that I posted about Shep Jones (also the originator of a well-known folk-song) last fall. I've recently acquired a "smartphone" (Huawei Vision 2, cost $80 total at Consumer Cellular, with a $15 a month phone-and-data plan). So I took a photo at Shep Jones, and even managed to send it via Bluetooth to my MacAir computer (where I compose all these posts). Here is is:

Interestingly the fields at Avalon have just received their annual mowing. This allows all the marvelous wildflowers to self-seed, while keeping the fields open and free of perennial weeds and invasives.  They also look wonderful. If only I could persuade the Open Space Committee of Riverhead Town to proceed in similar fashion at the Town Preserve (the "Sound Ave Preserve") that lies very near the hummingbird sanctuary, at Sound Ave and Terry Farm Rd. But it's being completely neglected and choked with invasives (Rosa multiflora, Russian Olive, japanese honeysuckle etc), with wildflowers unable to establish. Their main focus seems to be in putting up signs and laying down thick coarse mulch on all the paths making them nearly un-walkable. Perhaps I will write more of my interactions with this committee when a more generous mood descends. I think that many visitors to this preserve prefer to walk up Terry Farm Rd itself, though even there the footing is not ideal, because of the gravel my neighbors like to deposit there. And of course the hummingbird sanctuary at its northern terminus is private and strictly closed until august (and not much to see till then either, except an invalid trying to rest). You can see how much more attractive, walkable and rural Terry Farm Rd used to look when I first arrived in Baiting Hollow 25 years ago here: http://lihummer.org/newpag17.gif

The above image shows part of the northwest Avalon field, and you can just make out a nice nesting box (for bluebirds?) . The footpath is the slightly more green part in the middle; in a few weeks the wild flowers will have grown up on either side of the footpath (which might receive a bit of additional mowing as the season advances. No horrible thick mulch on the paths, which makes for good walking. When the monarda and cardinal flower (the latter along the stream banks) come into bloom I expect to see hummingbirds there.

In the meantime here's a very recent nice hummer photo taken april 23 in Manorville by Bob and Alicia Evers. You can see the classic "ruby-throat" of the adult male (who are always the first to arrive).

And here's another, from Donna DeSousa in Greenlawn - her first ever northward migrating adult male, on april 30:

Enjoy Donna's Facebook Page "Friends of the Baiting Hollow Hummingbird Sanctuary", inspired by the legal attack on the sanctuary (ongoing saga of which more soon) but now a very useful general source of info about hummingbirds and hummer photography, with a focus on Long Island (see also the link to the right of this post).

Of course today is May Day, my traditional first arrival date for a male hummingbird in Baiting Hollow (though in recent years I've usually missed it because we would still be in Eleuthera). May Day is celebrated throughout the world (except the US) as International Workers' Day. Ironically this was initially started to honor some demonstrating workingmen who were executed long ago in Chicago (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair). Le plus ça change le plus ça reste la meme chose (sorry no circumflex accents on my keyboard). But we have Labor Day, when plutocrats helicopter en masse over the sanctuary on their way to East Hampton.

Has my illness made me dyspeptic? Or just given me the leisure to read and spout?