Hummingbirds are beginning to fuel up for migration.
A male ruby-throated hummingbird showed up at our feeders the second week of July and was joined by five other males during the following weeks.
The migratory hummingbirds breed across the eastern half of North America, including areas in East Texas.
Males begin migrating south weeks before females and juveniles, principally because they have nothing to do with nest building and raising chicks.
What a luxury. Sire babies and leave it to females to do all the work.
Not that simple. The reproductive life of ruby-throated hummingbirds is more complicated than a male abdicating parental responsibility. While we don’t fully understand reproductive behavior of the hummingbirds, we do know that males work hard to find and protect springtime breeding territories rich in food before females arrive on the scene.
After breeding, the female ignores the male, who in turn probably mates with other females. After that, he may have nothing left to do but head south toward winter grounds.
Hence, males with gleaming red throats and shimmering green backs arriving in our yard after Independence Day to gulp down nectar from flower gardens and sugar-water from hummingbird feeders.
Their hunger for nectar has us refilling the feeders every other day.
Males have since been joined by females and juveniles with grayish-white throats, except for emergent red on the throats of juvenile males. All are downing flower nectar and sugar water as if there’s no tomorrow.
Yet they really are preparing for “tomorrow,” as they linger for several weeks while building up body fat to sustain a migration to winter homes Latin America.
They get fat from eating insects, but pursuing insects requires energy from sugar in flower nectar and hummingbird feeders.
And boy, are hummingbirds energetic.
We’re talking high-octane birds with wings beating about 53-times per second in a blurred figure-8 pattern while jetting backward, forward, up and down, or hovering in midair. Their hearts beat about 1,200 times a minute when flying, slowing to 250 beats a minute when perched.
Measuring about 3-inches long with an equally long wingspan, ruby-throated hummingbirds arrive here weighing between 3 and 3.5 grams, compared to a penny at 2.5 grams. But they’ll double their body weight with fat before heading south of the border.
Hummingbirds use fat for fuel to fly 500-600 miles across the Gulf of Mexico or to circumnavigate the Gulf in a grueling trip to winter homes in southern Mexico and Central America.