HARRISBURG – The Red Coats are coming! The Red Coats are coming! Well, they’re not exactly the British Red Coats invading New England; they’re ruby-throated hummingbirds and it would appear to be a northern invasion!
Pennsylvania Game Commission officials are encouraging residents to be on the look-out for ruby-throated hummingbirds, the only hummingbirds regularly found in Pennsylvania or east of the Mississippi in spring and summer.
“Hummingbirds begin to trickle into Pennsylvania in April and, by May 1, they’re usually well established across the state,” said Carl G. Roe, Game Commission executive director. “They winter in Central and South America. When they head north, they fly nonstop across the massive Gulf of Mexico and then flit from flowerbed to feeder to flowerbed through the South as they work their way north to their nesting grounds.”
To help Pennsylvanian’s track this migration, the Game Commission has posted a “Backyard Hummingbirds” section on its Web site, which includes a link to map by Hummingbirds.net that is being updated by citizen participants.
“According to entries submitted so far, hummingbirds were first spotted in Pennsylvania this year on April 4, in the southwestern corner,” Roe said. “Other sightings include the northeastern and eastern portion of the state on April 5, and southcentral region on April 6. Could your area be next?”
Pennsylvanians interested in seeing hummingbirds also can find information about what they can do in their backyards to make it more hospitable to this charismatic bird.
“Some people are convinced there’s a secret to getting hummingbirds to visit their yards,” explained Dan Brauning, the agency’s Wildlife Diversity Section chief. “As a rule, if you set the table for hummingbirds, they will come. They’re really not that finicky, and they’re surely interested in just about any feeding location they uncover. So the secret – if there is one – is getting noticed!
“As long as the feeder is visible, filled with relatively fresh nectar or sugar water, and hummingbirds have returned from their wintering grounds, there’s a good chance you’ll attract hummingbirds,” noted Brauning. “It doesn’t hurt to window-dress your rock gardens or flowerbeds with plants that hummingbirds seek out. But the feeder – preferably one that incorporates red in its design for establishing a new feeding location – is your first and best shot to attract early hummingbirds.”
Plants are great hummingbird attractors. Some of their favorites include red salvia, coral bells, trumpet vine, honeysuckle, gladiolus, jasmine, begonias, and scarlet morning glory. Other flowering magnets include hanging fuchsias, morning glory, paintbrush, petunias and trumpet-creeper. Wild flowers, such as columbine and beebalms (Monarda), are very appealing to hummingbirds and are easy to grow. Flowering trees and shrubs, such as mimosa (silk tree), or those that blossom, including rose-of-sharon, black locust, horse chestnut and sweetgum, also are great attention-getters.
Color is the key to stopping hummingbirds in your yard, so catch their eye with something colorful, particularly vibrant reds, oranges and yellows, even pinks and purples. Hummingbird feeders usually have red and yellow parts for flagging that get the job done. Then it’s up to the day-glow of your flowers to convince hummingbirds to drop their landing gear.
Some of the best flowers for attracting hummingbirds are those of tubular design. So go tubular and select festive colors. It’s also a good idea to create large patches of similar flowers rather than to put together a mish-mash in each bed. If your flowerbeds are near where you’ll hang your feeder, they’ll definitely serve as billboards to hummingbird traffic.
“The first step in getting hummingbirds to establish residency in your yard is to make them hit the brakes,” Brauning said. “As long as you’re not trying to attract hummingbirds to a busy urban area, it shouldn’t take a lot of work to get a hummingbird to stop. They prefer open areas with ample vegetation, and they aren’t opposed to zipping around houses, or approaching people.
“It’s usually a good idea to try attracting hummingbirds to a location on your property where disturbances are minimal and there is at least partial shade,” Brauning said. “Whether that’s a feeder off the back-porch, or suspended from a rod-iron stand in a rock garden in front of the house, doesn’t really matter. Once hummingbirds are using the feeder, move it five or 10 feet every other day toward the location you’d prefer they use for your viewing pleasure. They will follow readily.”
Male hummingbirds are extremely territorial; they guard feeders from lookout posts and chase one another away with the ferocity of maddened hornets. But they also will occasionally and enthusiastically attempt to chase bees, small mammals and other larger birds. It is because of this aggressive nature that it’s never a good idea to place hummingbird feeders near windows, particularly picture windows.
What makes the hummingbird so susceptible to glass – and each other – is the fabulous flight gear nature has provided. Its body can hum to a beat of up to 80 wing strokes per second. It can fly backwards, hover and rise like a helicopter and go from zero to 30 miles per hour in 20 feet. The bird is a natural wonder, one that few people ever tire of watching.
Of course, to keep its finely tuned body operating smoothly, the hummingbird requires an ample supply of nectar that is readily available. Nectar is as potent as rocket fuel to hummers because of its high-caloric content. But given the hummingbird’s limited ability to store energy and its high metabolic rate, the bird must constantly eat to satisfy its body’s needs and fuel flight. That’s why flowerbeds and feeder bottles are so “sweet” and essential to hummingbirds.
One word of caution about these feeders, however, is to be careful if you live in “bear country.” Due to their high-caloric offering, hummingbird feeders may attract any of Pennsylvania’s more than 15,000 bears, many of which will soon be out of their winter dens if they are not already.
So, if you want to feed hummingbirds, but want to avoid attracting bears to your property, consider bringing feeders inside at night or suspend feeders from high crosswires so they are at least 10 feet above the ground and four feet from anything a bear can climb, including overhead limbs.