Norman Knight
Our daughter, Amanda, called Becky to relay information she heard on her evening drive home. The radio voice suggested people put out hummingbird feeders when the first daffodils appear. That way when the little hummers do show up sometime around mid-March or April they will have a ready food supply. Hmm, early buds mean early birds? Sounds like an idea worth looking into. Thanks for the info, Amanda.
Amanda knew Becky and I like to observe the birds that visit our home. We are not in the category of bird enthusiasts who maintain a scrupulous life-list of bird sightings or those aficionados who plan vacations to scenic bird watching sanctuaries. No, we are more of the stand-at-the-window type of birders. “Hey, Look! A Baltimore Oriole! Wonder if it is the same one who visited this time last year.”
Many birds—woodpeckers and finches, for example—visit us year round while some show up only for the warmer Indiana weather. And even though it seems like it has been a cooler than normal beginning to spring, we have faith our snow bird friends will appear in their own due time.
And speaking of hummingbird information, National Wildlife magazine, one of the nature-related periodicals we receive periodically, relate how scientists have established that hummingbirds can smell danger. The article states: “Researchers at the University of California-Riverside have refuted the long-standing assumption that hummingbirds do not have a sense of smell.” First, I had no idea hummingbirds could not smell, much less that it was a “long-standing assumption.” Clearly this reveals obvious gaps in my hummingbird knowledge.
Anyway, the experiment established that though the tiny birds don’t have the ability to use their sense of smell to locate food, they do use it to detect and avoid “Argentine and Formica ants and other aggressive species…that may be lurking inside nectar flowers.” Another reminder that it’s a jungle out there, even in flower gardens.
Yet another experiment shows that hummingbirds can count. Researchers at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland noticed how during their searches for nectar hummingbirds kept returning to the same spots. “It takes a lot to power those whirring wings, which means it’s important not to waste energy going to places that are depleted of food,” said researcher Maria Tello-Ramos. Hummingbirds are very efficient in planning the best routes to move from flower to flower. The researchers wondered what types of information the hummingbirds used to remember those locations? Do they move from one flower to the next using visual clues? Or do they observe a sequence, learning which item follows the current one?
Ten artificial flowers were lined up with the first one containing nectar-like syrup as a reward. Researchers were not surprised when the birds went to the first one in the row. Then the flowers were rearranged so the position of the first flower was changed. Still, the birds would go to the first flower in the line. When the experiment was repeated using the third flower as the reward, they would go immediately to the third flower. “The findings suggest hummingbirds have a conception of numerical sequence,” the researchers concluded. Which, I guess, is another way of saying hummingbirds can count.
Using sugar and water, Becky made some hummingbird food, filled the feeders and hung them on hooks outside. Now we wait for their first appearance of the season. Hmm. Maybe this will be the year when some researcher somewhere will fill other gaps in my hummingbird knowledge. Maybe they will discover, contrary to the old joke, that although hummingbirds hum, they really do know the words.
