Just like the excitement and anticipation when you're sitting out on the water waiting for that first strike of a fish, that same excitement applies to those of us waiting on our first hummingbird. It can be hours, or even days before that slight movement catches your eye, and the heart begins to race rapidly after a long wait of anticipation. 
     Every season is unique in its own way. Every year brings new stories and events through our gardens, while our hopes are always for a better year than the past. As the snow melts in my own garden much further north, I read of my friends receiving their first hummingbirds all across the South, and it does nothing but add additional excitement to what's to come.
     It's the time of year to be most appreciated as we are welcomed with new life, song and color throughout our gardens. The smell of fresh soil and Spring air fills our senses, as our gardens once again come to life. 
In 2020, we didn't know who would show up, but Gunner, our newest Male Ruby-throat arrived to start his own legacy. May 2020, N.E. of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. 

     I think by now everyone knows that hummingbirds need flowers to survive, but what features do they look for in them to make them part of their daily routine? Hummingbirds can feed from nearly every flower available to them, however, there are certain criteria that make some flowers better than others. First of all, nectar is a necessity. It's the nectar they're after, so why do they prefer some over others? Flowers differ greatly by the sugar ratio provided, the access to the nectar, and the quantity of nectar in each flower. The sweetness of nectar within the flowers was created to entice many insects and hummingbirds into the flowers, so the pollen would attach itself to these creatures, and then be carried to other flowers to complete the pollination cycle. Although bees are a little less discriminating in their taste of pollen, hummingbirds will sample many flowers, and then separate the good from the bad.
     So what are hummingbirds looking for, to make select flowers a top contender? First of all, sweet nectar. The sweetness is what draws them in. The higher concentration of sugar, the better. The ease of access to it is what makes it a real winner. Let me compare two flowers to show you the difference. Petunias and Nasturtiums are very similar in flower size, but there is one distinct difference between the two, ease of access. You would think the access would be the same because of their similar shape, but the difference is more in the texture of the petals that makes them quite different. Petunias are a much softer and flimsier texture, while the nasturtiums are a much more rigid petal. In the image I've selected you can see how deep a hummingbird must go to access the nectar. When a hummingbird inserts its head so far within the flower, the wings start to interact with the petals of the flower. With a rigid flower you don't get a serious vacuum effect as the hummingbird cycles it's wings, whereas a petunia has very soft flimsy petals that get drawn to the wings far too easily. They find it much more difficult to fly and feed at the same time with the petunia. Of course hummingbirds are very opportunistic, and if all they have are petunias, they will feed from them. But if you have a selection of good and bad, they will decipher between them, and choose the good every time. I've talked about nasturtiums a lot in the past, and it's because they have two or three large drops of nectar in every flower. There are not many flowers, other than perhaps honeysuckle that contain such a large dose of sweetness. But because of the size and difficulty of access to the nectar in the nasturtiums, adult hummingbirds, specifically the smaller adult males, will often times avoid them. This is where nasturtiums are just a great flower for the younger birds, that are just enticed greatly by the quantity of nectar in each nasturtium flower. So what makes a flower even better? Something smaller, where they don't have to insert their head so far into the flower, where they can't see around themselves while feeding. Hummingbirds become very aware of their surroundings in a short time after leaving the nest. They've got enemies, including their own with anger issues that always make them susceptible to attacks while feeding. So the best choices are always smaller flowers with lots of nectar, with ease of access. So the question is, which flowers are the best by these criteria? Delphiniums, Salvia, Honeysuckle, Bee Balm, Vermillionaire, Crocosmia, and any others with the same characteristics.
The photo is a young Ruby throat that was greatly enticed by the rich nectar deep within this nasturtium. At this point in its life fear wasn't a factor, but the nectar sure was. 
Photo taken N.E. of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. 

      Repeatedly, several times a day, this youngster made a special point to visiting the Bluebird Clematis. It was later on in the season, and not many blooms remained, but the ones that did, received special attention. This juvenile male Ruby throat would get himself into all kinds of trouble, digging deep within the sturdy vines of this overgrown clematis. He knew there was some valuable nectar in each one of the blooms, and spent much of his time trying to extract it. Not only did he visit the open blooms rich with nectar, but he saw the hidden potential in all of those that remained tightly sealed. He watched and waited, and oftentimes poked and pried at the tightly sealed edges, just itching to access the fresh new nectar. Every morning at first light, you could see the excitement when he flew around the house, directly to his favorite. Every morning had new surprises and new blooms, and he knew it. 
​Photo from 2018, taken N.E. of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. 

It's that time of year again when all of us hummingbirders start planning out our garden and choosing the best varieties of flowers to attract hummingbirds. I'm sure many people have their favorite choices based on a wide range of ideas, but I want to give you my list for 2021 based on my own criteria. First, I want to tell you what I base my top selection on.
1. To rate a flower in my top seven, it has to attract hummingbirds consistently.
2. Hummingbirds must prefer these flowers over those that don't fall in the top seven. In other words they will make a special point to seek out particular flowers in and amongst the rest. 
3. To rate a flower 5/5 it must attract both the adult and juvenile hummingbirds. Many flowers work extremely well for the juveniles, but the adults will spend very little time in them. In that case they don't get the top rating. 
     I understand that everyone lives in a different climate and therefore have a different variety of plants that grow well within that climate. Of these plants that I have listed, most of them are grown as an annual, even though they are perennial in much warmer climates. 
7. Zinnia, rating 3+. This is a terrific annual that grows up to 3 ft tall. Don't let this three out of five rating fool you into thinking it's not worthy. I consider zinnias one of the greater training flowers for young hummingbirds. They are a large easy target to feed from, without having to solve the entrance to the food.
6. Bluebird Clematis, rating 3+. This is a Hardy zone 2 perennial that produces an abundance of springtime blooms, and oftentimes sporadic blooms in later summer. The mature birds will seek out every flower in springtime, while the young ones will get themselves into real trouble later on in summer, as they try to climb around the vines to get to each and every flower.
5. Vining Nasturtiums, rating 3-4. These flowers can be a hit or miss with young hummingbirds. If they're brave enough to dive deep to find the multiple drips of nectar, they will continue to seek them out. When they locate the precious nectar, they will continue repeatedly to feed from each and every flower.
4. Fuchsia, rating 4-5. These flowers come in many varieties, in which some rate better than others, but all of them are proven winners.
3. Vermillionaire, rating 4-5. These perennials are grown as annuals in many regions. They contain an abundance of red flutes filled with nectar, that once found, will attract both the mature and the juvenile hummingbirds. 
2. Salvias, rating 5. These flowers come in so many varieties, so it's very difficult to give a blanket rating across all of them. For the last two seasons I've grown farina blue salvias, and I couldn't be happier with them. I don't know about most regions, but in mine they are problem free, showy, continue flowering throughout the hummingbird season, produce a jewel of nectar in each and everyone of the hundreds of flowers it produces, and best of all it attracts hummingbirds better than just about anything else. It produced so well for me that I've taken cuttings and produced over 30 of them for this coming season. They are absolutely perfect in pots, and if raised off the ground, even better.
1. Delphiniums, hardy zone 2 to 6 perennial, rating 5. Many people know that I grow these flowers by The hundreds, because they produce like nothing else in the garden. They have one advantage over most other flowers in that they grow to heights of 4 to 10 ft. Higher flowers are always top choice for hummingbirds because they have greater security further off the ground. The hummingbirds gravitate towards these clusters in my garden, and will fight furiously over them. If I have any complaints, it would be the delphinium worms that can destroy the buds and blooms before they even open. The damage is usually visual early on, and if you see any signs of curled up buds or black spots within the stem, open them up and get rid of these worms, which will be light green in color. If you catch them early, you will have blooms on heads that can be over 2 ft tall atop the tall green stalks. Because of the height that these grow, it is often times necessary to stake them, and/or plant them against buildings protected from wind. 
     Those are the top seven, and even though I have a great selection of other plants in the garden, some others could also be included such as Hosta, Honeysuckle(if they bloom at the right time), Scarlet Runners, Bee Balm.... and more.
     If you grow some or all of the flowers I've suggested, I promise you, once a hummingbird locates your garden, they WILL make return visits.
     Some people only prefer flowers, and as for myself I have an abundance of flowers and feeders, which I find essential. But no matter which way you go, if you choose these flowers, you will be successful!

​     You can spend hours upon hours trying to plan out the perfect capture, and truthfully when it comes right down to it, it's those random surprise photos that turn out to be the most amusing. Feeder pictures, those of them hovering over the flowers and some of the more common captures can fill your computer's storage. But it's the surprise captures that are so much more unusual than the rest that really stand out. You can easily identify this young hummingbird as a male, with his little red freckle and a pattern of dark spots across his throat. But another way to identify him as a young bird is by his antics. Young birds don't have the endurance of the adults, so they tend to perch a little more frequently until they develop that endurance. They will get themselves into unusual circumstances, oftentimes entangled in the branches and leaves of flowers. Food comes before fear early in their lives, and over time of battling their way out of some tough predicaments, fear starts to arrange their priorities a little bit differently. They'll start to choose a little more wisely as to which flowers are worth the effort and which ones can get them into big time trouble. 
     This was a pleasant surprise where I had clear focus of the Delphinium flowers, and up from behind them popped a playful young male. 
Photo taken August 4th, 2017. N.E. of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. 

     What appeared to look like a very mild Winter, quickly deceived us with frigid temperatures. Nothing could have prepared us for the last 2 weeks, with lows reaching -30 Celsius and colder. But things are about to break. Temperatures much closer to the freezing mark will be extremely welcome over the next week.
     The ground remains frozen 2 ft below the surface up here in the North, but the hummingbirds have begun to get that itch in their feathers down south. Absolutely nothing can curb their desire to travel hundreds of miles for one sole purpose, breeding. While they do what they do, I spend hours downstairs in the plant room preparing for the upcoming season and improving on the last.
     In the previous hummingbird season, we added one fantastic addition to our hummingbird garden. We managed to find a stockpile of "farina blue salvias" at a local plant store. They stood an impressive 2 ft tall and provided a striking appearance in each one of our raised pots. The previous year we sampled one of them, or should I say the hummingbirds did, and they found it to be one of the best flowers in the garden. Because there was only one of them, the nectar supply ran short quickly. So last year we placed one in each pot, and it did wonders. Not only did the Young birds appreciate each and every one of them, but the dominant male, Gunner, also appreciated the additions. These salvia flowers looked so good at the end of the season, I found it far too difficult to let them go down with the frost, so I chose to propagate them from cuttings. It was a relatively simple process, however a bit time-consuming, but all I had was time over the next 6 months. 1. I took a couple candy tub containers with lids, and drilled out some large holes in the lids. 2. Then I cut about 50 Sylvia cuttings, leaving only two large leaves, and in some cases only one. If there was a flower pushing out between those leaves, I snipped it off. 3. I simply placed all of those cuttings through the holes in the lid, and filled up the plastic tub with water. I set these plastic tubs just out of direct light in the house, but with plenty of indirect light. 3. It didn't take long before many of them developed roots. I would say the success rate was about 60%. 4. As the individual cuttings would develop a good set of roots, I placed them into a 3" pot with 75% peat moss and 25% perlite. 5. I simply kept them under fluorescent lights over the winter, watered them daily, and fed them a bit of 20-20-20 fertilizer every other week. Right now they are doing very well. With two and a half months to go, I'm sure they will have several flower heads by the time they get placed out in Spring. 
     I will continue to nurture these newly developed plants along with many other seedlings that I started about 6 weeks ago, and I will wait and wonder about the new season to come.
     

     Our hummingbird season is incredibly short in the northern reaches of their territory, but within that short period of time there are so many stories to tell. There were numerous hummingbirds battling for flowers and feeders around our garden, but one feeder near us, with clusters of flowers all around, provided many smiles and giggles for the remaining two weeks of the season. Gunner, our dominant male hummingbird, was the last adult male to leave. He covered an area with two feeders until Miles solved the feeder. He was an aggressive young boy. Soon he left, and then Junior took over. He also provided much amusement. Finally, there was one who stood out in many ways from all the rest. I never like to have a hummingbird leave our place without learning the feeders first, so one really gave us a challenge. One young male was so fixated on the Salvia that he wouldn't even look at any other flower, let alone the feeders. I tried placing training feeders right near the flowers, but with no luck. He was focused on just the Salvia alone. It took time, and much of it, before he started sampling the Vermillionaire and the vining Nasturtiums. My homemade nasturtium flower just wasn't close enough for him to test out on the feeder. So I grabbed a nasturtium flower, plucked the tail end off, and inserted it into the feeder. It took a few passes, but suddenly that lone nasturtium got his attention. He stuck his bill in, tasted it, and moved to the rest. It was on his third round through the flowers that he finally realized there was something very unique about that one flower. He inserted his bill, drank, and realized this flower had more nectar than all the rest. Suddenly he was annoyed with the flower. He tried in many ways to move it out of his way so that he could reach the source in behind. He fought with that flower, and then moved on. I quickly removed the real flower from the feeder and waited for his return 15 minutes later. He poked a few of the other flowers, but quickly remembered that special one. He flew to it, notice the flower missing, but inserted his bill into the fake feeder flower. Success! He learned it and made it top priority. What gave him a special name was the fact that he didn't like bumblebees that much. It wasn't honey bees or wasps that he had issues with, it was bumblebees. Anytime and every time he would spot a bumblebee in his cluster of flowers, he made it his mission to chase that bumblebee around the yard. We knew every time a bumble bee would show up, that shortly after, the Little Bee Slayer would show him the business and escort him out. This little guy would honestly slap those bumble bees like a pinata. One bumblebee had his world rearranged when he got slapped out of the air and knocked into the plants below. He buzzed a little, gathered his bearings, and left like a missile, with no intentions of returning. But sadly, within a few days, the Bee Slayer too had moved on. Overall, it was an incredibly successful season. The number of locals, casuals and migrants filled the yard for about 5 weeks, and left me with many stories to tell. The second image, he's poking through the real Nasturtium to get to the feeder behind. 
August 28, 2020. N.E. of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

     Some people may not understand the attachment that us "hummingbirders" have to these tiny little creatures. When they first start to show up in our garden, they have an innocence about them. They are naive to danger, and they flit and flutter almost clumsily through the flowers. They are baby like in much of their behavior and actions. They make us smile, and it doesn't take long before we claim them as our own. They become recognizable by certain traits and behaviors that are different from all the others. We name them as we do our pets. But they  quickly mature, and within days they can leave with little warning. There is a void created in us when they don't return to our garden, but it's far worse when you see them rise up into the sky, watch them gradually disappear, and head to a place they've never known. We raise them like our own, care for them with special treatment, and then they leave, many of which will never return. It's extremely rewarding to watch a successful year come to fruition, but deeply sorrowful to watch them leave, only knowing this is what they're meant to do. 
     This youngster would show up multiple times throughout the day to feed from this Vermillionaire, and then go to the training feeder which he learned quickly. Juvenile male Ruby-throat hummingbird. N.E. of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. 

     Life away from the nest was new and exciting. Flowers and color were everywhere, and temptation of food forced independence from his mother very quickly. He didn't want to sit around and wait for food to come to him, but rather explore the fields of food just waiting to be sampled. He spent much time in the flowers while squeaks and battles pursued all around him. He was intrigued with all the activity going on, but was soon initiated into the fast paced world of hummingbirds as the swift attacks from all directions soon involved him. It didn't take long before he too would witness a speedy hummingbird overhead and felt the need to chase it. Then the shiny red object hanging overhead intrigued him enough to give it a sample. This thing had flowers filled with nectar like he'd never seen in his short existence. The nectar went half way up the bill and didn't seem to run out like all the other flowers. He drank for a minute straight, and still the flower remained full. Then another hummingbird showed up at the feeder. Instant anger boiled over, and his "mine" attitude forced him to chase the other around the yard. He belted out an undeveloped squeak, performed his uncoordinated little intimidation arc, and let the other know that the feeder belonged to only him. He seemed quite impressed with himself has he showed off every little skill built into his DNA. He showed off to the point that he forgot about the task at hand. "My feeder"! He quickly flew back across the large garden, but on his way the anger began to boil over once again. From a distance he saw two other birds on his feeder. It was at this point that he earned his name. "Miles" was appropriate, as he came in like a wrecking ball. He bashed one off one side of the feeder, immediately turned, and smacked the other, and set the record straight to all that the feeder belonged to only him. Even Gunner retreated to a single feeder until his time to move on to a warmer climate. Since Gunner left, Miles now believes he's in charge. His little stature sure makes him cute, but his large attitude makes him fierce and one not to be messed with.
First image is Miles cleaning off the nectar after diving deep into the feeder, while the second image is him protecting his treasure right past sunset.
Juvenile male Ruby-throat hummingbird, N.E. of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. August 13, 2020.