Hummingbird Weight Watching

No, this is not a weight program for hummingbirds, but a quixotic attempt to see if I can detect what a “fattened up” hummingbird looks like compared to their usual size.  Its fall, you see, and I have often read that they need to add a good 40% to their weight before they attempt migration, at least migration over a body of water, like some of them may do over the Gulf and so, I am looking for a chunkier than normal looking bird.

Quixotic is the right word for this, for I have read that they go from 3.25 grams to 6 grams prior to flying over the Gulf.  Something tells me 2.75 grams doesn’t show up as much as my 10 lb. gain since being in Texas does.  Still, life is made up of little challenges like these.  Poor little things, they weigh them again when they land and they are only at 2.5 grams.  Hopefully some nice Mexican spiders are waiting for them, lush nectar to wash it down with so they can regain what they lost.

Here in TX we are host in the summer to the Black Chinned Hummingbird, whom I haven’t seen in awhile.  Visitors to my feeder are definitely that, visitors.   Red Throated Hummingbirds, first the males, then the females, have been straggling through.  They stay a few days and perhaps are fattening up, indiscernibly, then flying every southward.

So many of the small song birds and others fly by night; its cooler, fewer predators, but the hummingbirds travel solo, and by day, supposedly, just over the treetops.  They do stay and dine awhile where they find nectar available and the only non-stop push is the 500 mile flight over the Gulf.  Not that all of them go that route, at least not in the fall with the threat of hurricanes being encoded somehow in their DNA.  Instinct is what drives them on; the ones born this summer aren’t following the crowd but just following the inner drive to eat a lot and head south. 

And whereas the larger migrating birds may cover a couple of hundred miles a day, hummingbirds do about 23 miles a day.  Clearly, those coming from Canada have to leave early.  I know on the Cape, by now, I would probably be missing them.  For that matter, it has slowed down here in TX too, with most of them making the TX coast by just about this time in Sept but not all. 

And that is the key point.  Keep those feeders out, even after they appear to be gone, for the late straggler, the last one hatched out of the nest etc.  And they are faithful to return to where the food is something they can count on.  The hummingbirds that stay with you all summer are the progeny of generations of hummingbirds that have found your sugar water and flowers to be just right.  Even the migrants are said to have their own favorite remembered stops along the way.  Makes me think I should maybe hang my feeder on a really high pole in fall so it can be seen from the “interstate”. 

And if you happen to see any that have let another notch out of their belt, let me know.  You may have keener eyes than I do for such a thing.