A summer-hummer squall in Baiting Hollow

Time to take a break from LaLa though she's still strutting her stuff at the sanctuary. Instead, here's a video from the summer, which shows one of the  squabbles between ruby-throated hummingbirds that goes on all summer: one starts to feed but is then rudely challenged by another - typically the "owner" of this particular patch of flowers. Notice the way the challenger spreads out his tail-feathers in a warning sign.

LaLa by Mary Laura

Mary Laura Lamont, a noted local naturalist, expert birder and old friend, topped by to say hello to LaLa and took this photo. Note the speckling on the throat - but we still don't know if it's a boy or girl - but very likely the latter.

LaLa poses and flicks her silvery tongue

Charles P Torrey - abolitionist.

The gravestone of Charles Torrey, in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Boston.

"Memoir of Rev. Charles T. Torrey who died in the penitentiary of Maryland, where he was confined for showing mercy to the poor. By J.C. Lovejoy"

The Web in general, and Wikipedia in particular, is a mine of obscure but interesting information (as well as a terrible time-waster - but where does one draw the line?)

I recently came across the above interesting sentence while searching for something else in the Stony Brook University Library. The text of the excellent old biography is here.

And here is the first paragraph of Wikipedia article (from which the above photo was taken):

Charles Turner Torrey (November 21, 1813 - May 9, 1846) was a leading American abolitionist. Although largely lost to historians until recently, Torrey pushed the abolitionist movement to more political and aggressive strategies, including setting up one of the first highly organized lines for the Underground Railroad and personally freeing approximately 400 slaves (more than any other abolitionist). Torrey also worked closely with free blacks, thus becoming one of the first to consider them partners. John Brown cited Torrey as one of the three abolitionists he looked to as models for his own efforts.^[1]

The article relates his tragic fate. At least he died knowing his cause was just.

More Magnificence

Here are some Arizona hummingbird photos taken during the recent family trip by my son Jamie (and have a look his blog). First up, an adult male Anna's. Note the glittering red gorget and purple head.



Now for the Magnificents.



wow - I think I would explode if one of these arrived at the sanctuary! These are twice as large as Anna's or Ruby-throats.



here you see the green back.



and one more

2 new Lala portraits

My friend and Stony Brook colleague Maurice Kernan and his son Thomas came out yesterday to say hi to LaLa and me. Here's a couple of shots that Thomas took (of LaLa and my tripod - photographers get frustrated when their subject keeps trying to perch on their tripod).

She's still here today and is checking out all the flowers and feeders.

New Lala vid

Lala, a rufous hummingbird from the West Coast, is still enjoying the Baiting Hollow Hummingbird Sanctuary, and is getting quite fat. Filmed on dec 5. 2X slo-mo. She arrived on or before nov 17. And here she's topping up at a feeder (4X slo-mo):-

Great Videos, though not from Baiting Hollow

Here I provide links to several Youtube vids not taken by me. First up, a short vid showing a rufous wintering in Alabama. You can see she's almost identical to LaLa, the rufous currently wintering at the Baiting Hollow Sanctuary. However, the one in Alabama does show a small patch of red on the throat. Despite this the movie says it's a she, and this is probably correct. Mine has no red spot, and is presumably a juvenile. The rufous is the hummingbird migration champion, breeding in Alaska and wintering in central america, and covering a distance of 4000 miles. They are also considered the most aggressive of US hummingbirds. These 2 facts might partly account for why they show up on the east coast in winter - even as far north as Long Island.

Many of my readers will have already seen the wonderful "Nature" video "Hummingbirds: Magic in the Air" -

I recently came across an equally good one, "Jewelled Messengers", presented by "National Geographic" and beautifully narrated by David Attenborough: 

                                    

The sequence starting at 23.00 is particularly striking- it shows the courtship dance of the tiny Wire-Crested ThornTail, which is found in Ecuador and Peru. 

LaLa still here!

I'm on my way to Court now but I just saw that Lala, my rufous hummingbird, is still here at the sanctuary. She's been here from at least nov 16 - almost 3 weeks.


My testimony ended earlier than expected (don't know whether that's a good or bad sign), and I'm back in front of the woodstove, and have seen LaLa again, at the feeders. (A couple of kind friends came out during my absence and refilled the feeders).  Unfortunately I neglected to bring a camera but will return tomorrow and try to get more video.

Back from Arizona; Anna's, Costa's and Broad-Tailed

We are back from our trip to Arizona. In the last few days we stayed 3 nights at Madera Canyon, 2 nights in Ramsey Canyon and a last night near Tucson.
In Madera Canyon we saw hummingbirds both at the Chuparosa Inn, where we stayed, and at the Santa Rita Lodge. In both cases we saw the large Magnificent Hummingbirds (see my previous posts) and smaller hummingbirds that often had a red or purple throat. On our way from Madera to Ramsey we stopped at the Paton Hummingbird Center in Patagonia. This is famous amongst hummingbird-lovers because the Patons for many years maintained feeders in their backyard , and invited hummingbirders to visit. Their yard is very close to the Sonoita Creek, one of the few year-round streams in southern Arizona, which attracts a great variety of birds, including many visitors from Mexico. Here we saw a couple of small hummers, but I'm not sure which of the 2 main winter residents, Anna's and Costa's, they were (similar doubts extended to the small hummers we saw at Madera, though there were many of them at the Santa Rita Lodge). We also saw small hummers at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve in Phoenix. This is a waste-water treatment center in a big city which has been cleverly made into a wildlife sanctuary. My expert birder son Jamie felt that the obviously red-throated ones at all these locations were Anna's, and the purple-throats were Costa's, but reviewing images on the web I'm not quite sure - Anna's can also look purplish. But the example below (filmed at the Santa Rita Lodge) is clearly red and presumably an Anna's,
Of course this late in the year we did not expect to see many hummingbirds, but we were not disappointed. It was frustrating however to be far away from my rufous in Baiting Hollow! I will soon check to see if LaLa is still around.

The next vid was from the Paton Center - definitely purplish and probably a Anna's, though at first Jamie and I thought it might be an Costa's.

We also visited Mary-Jo Ballater's wonderful Ash Canyon B and B near Ramsey Canyon, and compared notes with her on our very similar legal problems. I will write soon about this visit, but here I will just mention that we saw, but did not film,  a broad-tailed hummingbird. Mary-Jo hosts some unusual hummers in summer. She is probably the best place in the US to see Lucifers and the Plain-Capped Starthroat. M
PS Mary-Joe informs me that the above bird is probably an Anna's. A Costa's would be pre pink-purple, and the gorget would come down onto the top of the chest, like a British judge's wig.