Mike in the Wild

The first of July is Rufous Hummingbird Day at my cabin in Prescott.  Like most years, that was the day this summer when I saw the first one of the season perching in the alligator juniper tree adjacent to my deck.  By the end of the week, that or some other male rufous had unsurprisingly supplanted a male Anna's as the new owner of my yard's hummingbird feeder.   Anna's hummingbirds can reside year-round in Prescott, many surviving winter's sub-zero temperatures and snowstorms.  To help them out during the arrival of the dominant rufouses, I installed a second sugar water feeder in my yard as soon I discovered the migrants.  Alas within a few days, another male rufous took control of that supply of nectar also.  Any Anna's imbibed only by daring occasional, furtive sips.   Before the arrival of the rufous, I began spotting an occasional black-chinned hummingbird at the feeder.  This bird is a summer visitor to the higher elevations of A...

I figured the birds in my backyard would be upset when I removed a three year-old palo verde tree.  After all, I wasn't happy about the act myself.  The tree had grown quickly, reaching over a dozen feet tall and spreading its canopy even further, mercifully providing much needed shade and a cooling effect on a hot, sunny wall. An additional benefit was that it offered perches for towhees, cardinals, and thrashers.  Also verdins gorged on insects or seeds at the tips of the tree's skinny branches and gila woodpeckers hunted for grubs in the cavities of the expanding trunk. However there was a problem below ground: the roots were outgrowing the raised planter box that anchored the tree.  The strong winds from a heavy summer monsoon had buffeted the tree so violently that the container's concrete blocks were cracking.  I was beginning to fear that another storm might even cause the adjacent wall to tumble down. A local tree service arrived on a Wednesday and quick...

The new year has greeted Phoenix with chilly overnight temperatures that seem to make my backyard nectar feeder even more important to my neighborhood's hummingbirds.  As usual, a male Anna's has established control over his territory and is chasing other hungry hummers away.  Nevertheless, with persistence and guile, other birds are getting their own sips in at the feeder even if only for a brief moment.   At dusk, interestingly, the male's defenses must either be overwhelmed or they just call it a night as I've seen up to five or six birds at one time filling the eight spaces at the feeder.  It's the only time I see a mix of males, females and juveniles in such close proximity. While the Anna's hummingbird is the dominant species in my area of Phoenix, the Costa's has become a regular visitor to my yard during the winter.  This variety of the bird probably breeds further west and north along the Colorado River and in southern California during warme...

Every backyard hummingbird feeder in Arizona will attract at least one of the diminutive birds.  In my Phoenix yard, a male Anna's hummingbird always seems to claim it as his own, fiercely fighting other visitors away.  I can't identify individual birds with any high degree of certainty, but I'm pretty sure any specific 'alpha-male' only dominates the area several months at a time.  Then, a new, more aggressive replacement moves into the territory. Many Anna's remain in Phoenix all year, while others seem to migrate to cooler climates north during the hot summer.   The fellow hanging out at the moment is relatively calm and cooperative - not words I usually associate with a hummingbird!  At least he is for some photographs.  The close-up pictures confirm that his gorget or neck feathers, along with those on his head, are not as bright and full as those on mature males.  Maybe he's filling a gap in the territory, left free when a stronger, more experi...