It's the middle of April, and the weather has conspired to keep our migrating hummingbirds from heading further north, so the local population has grown even more. In addition to the resident Anna's, we now are seeing Calliopes, along with the Rufous. Calliope hummingbrids are the smallest North American hummers. Their size alone provides a good field mark. When the weather clears up, they will continue north into the high mountains, where they make their summer homes and breed. We have often seen them in the high sierra, in their breeding habitat, where they enjoy the wildflowers.
Once, on a camping trip to Horse Meadow, a Forest Service campsite on the Kern Plateau, in Yosemite National Monument (outside the park proper), we were hiking up the little creek when a Calliope discovered us. I was wearing a red gimme hat, and had red shoelaces on my hiking boots. The Calliope first flew all around my head, checking out the hat; then dropped down and checked out both boots (the red laces); and finally popped up to face level and chittered angrily at me, clearly chewing me out for false advertising.
Here are more pictures including one showing the size difference between an Anna's and a Calliope.
The past weeks have seen us inundated with both rain and hummingbirds. So far it's been just the usual suspects: Anna's Hummingbirds and Rufous Hummingbirds. The rufous ones are only passing through -- they migrate further north for the summer -- but the Anna's are regular residents. At least some of them are. I expect that many of those we're seeing now are also on their way north.
Later on in the spring we expect to see more exotic varieties such as the Calliope (a tiny hummer that normally lives high in the mountains), the Black-chinned, Allen's, and Costa's. We've had all of them in past years, often all during the same season, as they stop here during migration.
The last couple of years our populations have been huge. We have six feeders out, and are going through 2 and 3 quarts of sugar water per day. At the evening rush we have seen over sixty birds at a time. It's hard to tell how many more, they move far too fast.
I have posted a few pictures here.
March 11, 2006. Woke up this morning to find large, fat flakes of snow drifting silently down. We had a little snow here back in February, but this was more like the real thing. It won't stay, of course, but it did amount to about three inches (7.62 cm for you metric types). Of course I took pictures.
March of 2006 came in with high winds and rain, leading to a couple of power outages and more. I looked out the window one morning to discover that my neighbor's water tank was gone. Oops! Upon exploration, I found it down at the bottom of the hill, between his well and mine. It looks like a small tornado must have struck. See the photo gallery.
Snow! on February 19, 2006, we got snow! It's only a big deal here because we almost never see any. But I couldn't let it pass without notice, so I took some pictures.