Finally saw the female rufous. She quietly flushed from the Powderpuff and landed in the bottlebrush. A squirrel flushed her and she hovered in front of me long enough for ID and then got chased away by another hummer. The increase in hummer activity in the yard may be why I see less of the Rufous but it may also be that I added the other feeders and now she can feed in areas I can't easily monitor and with less competition.

 

The male Ruby-throat with a large central gorget spot and a broken bill has been fiercely guarding the left side of the yard for at least the past week. I also saw an apparent young male with considerable stippling and no noticeable gorget feathers. That's at least 5 hummingbirds observed in my yard today.

 

Also, a note that tropical storm Ernesto made landfall in south Florida early this morning and is soon to exit the east coast almost due east of here. I've received about a half inch of rain in the past 24 hours but no notable wind.

I was not able to see the Rufous today although I may have heard her. I observed a male Ruby-throat with better than half its gorget, feeding at a feeder in the back corner on the left side of the yard as well as an adult with full gorget in the back right corner. There was a considerable amount of two hummer chases. The adult male Ruby-throat sat calmly above the well paying no attention to the chases. He ignored one hummer who tried hard to get him to leave his perch. I'm assuming this is the attitude of the Rufous as well and that's why I didn't see her. She has been avoiding most of the chases.

 

Also observed in the yard today was a Yellow Warbler and a Yellow-throated Vireo. An interesting sighting was watching an unidentified hummingbird chase a Cooper's Hawk across a few of the neighbor's yards after the hawk gave up stalking the jays and cardinals in my yard. I guess it was unhappy that there were no doves. I saw it make a dive at three doves on the roof of my house yesterday. They disappeared on the other side of the house before I could tell the outcome.

I added five more feeders today. I tried to put them in last winter's more popular locations. Last spring's pruning prevented me from hanging one in what was the Rufous' preferred site. I've now got two of them in the front yard, one on each side and five across the back. I'm not seeing a big increase in hummingbirds but I did see a new young male Ruby-throat that has a large patch of gorget feathers in one side of its neck.

 

It's been a good day for butterflies with the swallowtails well represented in the yard (Black laying eggs on fennel, Giants, Tigers, Spicebush, a lot of Polydamus, and one brilliant male Pipevine), along with Orange-barred and Cloudless Sulphurs, Gulf Frits and Zebra Heliconians, Monarchs, Cassius Blues, and Dorantes Skippers.

 

A few migrants have been seen or heard today including Red-eyed and Yellow-throated Vireos, parulas, Yellow-throated Warblers, Chimney Swifts, and gnatcatchers.

The Ruby-throated activity continues to pick up. There still aren't large numbers but there are enough to have multiple Ruby-throat chases. I observed three of them chasing over the yard today for the first time this season. The Rufous continues to make regular visits to the feeder and occasionally perches out in the open for me. I haven't put out additional feeders yet. Probably will tomorrow.

I'm still seeing the female Rufous. She's been a bit harder to find early in the morning but eventually she will show herself. If I recall correctly, she did the same thing for a spell last year.

 

I'm now seeing regular visits by young Ruby-throats to all 4 of my feeders. Some are spooked and don't use the perches while others sit for long periods filling up. I'm probably going to start adding feeders since all four are being used.

The Rufous was oddly silent this morning. Where she usually comes out to see me as soon as I walk into the back yard, it took a number of visits, both silent and while making noise, before she made her presence known. When she did, she sat in the open in the Bottlebrush making quite a bit of noise proclaiming her presence. There also seems to be a regular young male ruby-throat in the back corner by the well.

I only had a short time to bird the yard this morning. I heard the Rufous almost immediately as I walked across the backyard. As I stepped into the feeding area, she flew up to a high perch at the back of the area. As I strained to get a look at her through some branches, she flies in close and sits in the open on a closer perch too close for binoculars. She sits watching me watch her until I leave. No sign of other hummers today.

While washing the dishes I observed a female Selasphorus with very little if any gorget feathers grown in feeding at the feeder. I was unable to get her in the binoculars but I'm guessing she was a hatching year bird. 

 

Also seen out the window while washing the dishes were a young male Ruby-throat sporting a couple of red gorget feathers, the banded Rufous, and a female Summer Tanager.

Photos of the banded female Selasphorus that showed up last week reveal a few numbers on the band and indicate that she is the Rufous that was first banded here in November of 2003. Photos at: http://mysite.verizon.net/resu64md/ .

 

Also in the yard competing with the Rufous has been a young Ruby-throat. At least one other ruby-throat has regularly been seen in the front yard. Still no sign of multiple Ruby-throats chasing through the yard and no guarantee that the ones I'm seeing aren't different birds migrating through each day.

After a few weeks of one or two Ruby-throated sightings in the yard, the first non-Ruby-throat of the season showed up today, a female Selasphorus. She appears to be the same bird that has returned each year since her first arrival in September of 2003.