One Week In August
No single bird species generates as much interest at this time of year (measured by emails sent and received) as hummingbirds. It seems that everyone in Calgary these days is trying to attract these tiny wonders to their backyards and gardens.
Most people do not appear to be having much luck, though. At least, they seem to think they are not having much luck and frustration is the word they are using most often to describe how they are feeling.
But in most cases these feelings of frustration are significantly premature. It can take a year or more of persistent effort to attract the first hummingbird to an urban backyard and it can take several years to develop a steady flow of hummingbird visitors.
So to people who are easily frustrated, I say forget about it. Bird watching is supposed to be a time for relaxation. If you aren’t enjoying the process, then maybe you should find another hobby. Putting out your first hummingbird feeder won’t result in instant gratification.
To those who are prepared to be patient, however, I say hang in there. It does take some time, but the pay off is that day (or week) in mid August a few years down the road when every perch is full and the hummingbirds are buzzing through your yard like mosquitoes after a thundershower.
Hummingbirds do not live here in Calgary. They live, for the most part, in Central and South America where the dense vegetation of the jungles teems with blooming nectar flowers, giant spiders, tree climbing snakes and all kinds of furry little mammals that snack on hummingbirds like we snack on cheese doodles.
So while South America, with its hosts of tubular, nectar rich wildflowers may be an ideal place for a hummingbird to live and wile away the winter months, the number of predators makes it no place to raise a family.
A far better place to do that is the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where the spiders are small enough for a hummingbird to eat and where the snakes — few that there are — tend not to not climb trees.
So hummingbirds come to our city and through our city with only one thing in mind. It’s breeding season. Time to find a mate and raise a family. No time for much else. Just enough time to do that and store up some body fat and head back south before it starts to snow again.
How much time is that? Not much. Fourteen weeks at best during most years. That’s just 98 days. And given Calgary’s erratic weather, 98 can sometimes turn into a short 75 or an even shorter 60.
So your window for attracting hummingbirds in Calgary is not a large one. They begin trickling into the Calgary area sometime around Mother’s Day. If the weather is poor, they will hang around in the city for a few days waiting for it to clear. Otherwise, they head straight to their breeding grounds and get busy with the family thing.
Male hummingbirds tend to arrive first with Rufous preceding both Calliope and Ruby-throated by a few days at the very least.
After pausing for a day or two at nearby feeders to replenish their energy stores after migrating many thousands of kilometres, male Rufous Hummingbirds seek out a south-facing hillside smothered under Common Caragana and stake out a territory.
Male Calliope Hummingbirds, meanwhile, look for flat flood plains studded with Wolf Willow and birch while male Ruby-throated Hummingbirds look for densely vegetated shrub pockets in the shadows of towering White Spruce trees.
Soon after the males have set up their territories, the females start passing through the Calgary area. Unlike the males who may spend a few days in the city before moving out into the natural areas, however, the females usually get straight to work and bypass the city altogether.
Passing through our natural areas like Weaselhead and Fish Creek, the females are greeted by show off males tracing giant loops high above their breeding territories. In very short order, the female chooses one male in particular who impresses her with the size of his territory and the vigor of his mating display. A momentary mid air encounter ensues and the female is off to build a nest, lay her two eggs and raise the kids on her own.
The male, meanwhile, returns to the tip of a high branch overlooking his kingdom and waits for the next interested female to come along.
He doesn’t wait long though. Within six or eight weeks from the day he arrives in Calgary, mating season is over and he is on his way back to the jungles of Mexico and points south.
He may stop briefly in the city for a short visit at a favourite nectar feeder, but this is unlikely. For during the short period of time he spent on his territory waiting for itinerant females, all of his favourite local foods were in full bloom and nectar was in good supply.
Moreover, because the flow of females slowed to a trickle during the last few weeks of his sojourn in Calgary, he expended very little energy on mating displays and so has enough fat stored around his shoulders to carry him through most of the journey back south.
So the males vanish as suddenly as they arrive and all that remains in the Calgary area are the women and their newly hatched young slowly building their own fat supplies and beginning their separate and more leisurely journey back home.
This, believe it or not, is when hummingbird season really begins in the city.
It is early August when the first few birds begin to show up at urban hummingbird feeders. It is mid August before there are enough of them around for the numbers to be called significant. Then the numbers begin to fall off and by Labour Day, by and large, the hummingbirds are gone.
So for backyard birdwatchers in Calgary, hummingbird season consists of a week in May, a few chance encounters in June and July and a peak period of couple of weeks during the month of August.
It’s not a lot of time. Hardly worth the effort, some people say. Which is why when I first came to Calgary I heard over and over again that it is hardly worth putting up a hummingbird feeder in Calgary. The season’s too short to bother, said most of the people I asked.
But I don’t agree with them. I mean after all, I can’t tell you how much time I spend tilling the ground, mulching and watering and fertilizing plants that will produce flowers for only a few weeks in late summer.
My approach to hummingbird season, therefore, is a gardener’s approach. It is a patient approach that began to pay off just a few years after I set out to attract hummingbirds.
I start on Mother’s Day weekend by putting out large pots of red silk flowers I found at a dollar store. These bright red fakes compensate for a lack of real blooms during this brown part of our growing season.
The large pots of fake red flowers attract hummingbirds passing through the area. They soon discover that the flowers are fakes, but that’s OK because while discovering this they also discover the nectar feeders I have set up over the flowers.
Most biologists believe that migrating bird species, like hummingbirds, have excellent long term memories when it comes to desirable nesting and feeding sites. So the fake red flowers coupled with the nectar feeders makes my yard memorable and creates repeat hummingbird traffic.
By early August, meanwhile, my real hummingbird plants are blooming and the fake flowers are safely stored away in the garage. Bee Balm, Coral Bells, Weigela, Delphinium, Honeysuckle and Monk’s Hood offer an appealing sight from the sky to migrating hummingbirds who come to feed and explore the surrounding area.
After staying in the area for about a week, they know it well and are more likely to come back next hummingbird season. Just three years after starting my hummingbird gardening project, therefore, I had one amazing week in August last year during which I was averaging over 200 hummingbird visits a day.
Can this result be extrapolated to the rest of the city? Probably not. I live near Weaselhead where hummingbirds are common throughout the summer. Other people who I know are also having exellent success live along the west side of Calgary, along one of our river valleys or near Fish Creek Park.
This means that hummingbirds are common during hummingbird season over about one-third of the city. What happens over the other two-thirds of the city I cannot say.
I can say, though, that you will know within a few years whether or not setting up a hummingbird feeder in your backyard is worth the effort. Just don’t expect to set one up today and be flooded with hummers tomorrow.
It can take a few years to learn the truth about attracting hummingbirds to your Calgary backyard, but if you never plant the seeds, you will never get that one week in August when you get to admire the blooms.
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Brent Johner has been writing about urban wildlife since 1998. Many of the articles here first appeared in the Calgary Herald, Calgary Gardening magazine or on Talk About Wildlife. Brent has also done dozens of radio, television, newspaper and magazine interviews on the subject of urban wildlife.