Nice picture but to me it looks like a female. Sarah

man, what a dynamite photo! focus, lighting, everything. nice job capturing that one little gorget feather in the light just right. looks like he's wearing a gem around his neck. thank you.

It would be interesting to find a banding station in one of the eastern coastal states, and see if their numbers are up or down. I'm curious and will try to look into it. When I watched the first sightings map this spring on hummingbirds.net, I noticed that the map filled in in an interesting way. It seemed like one wave moved up the Mississippi valley, and the other came up the east coast. They seem to avoid crossing the Appalachians during their migrations, probably because the elevations are higher and the flowers are later to bloom. So, from what I remember, there were hummers in Minnesota, and hummers in New England before they ever got into western PA. I think this might be because our hummers are coming from the south and west, and it takes them forever to move across Indiana and Ohio. If you're a hummingbird working your way up the Mississippi, Minnesota is actually closer than western PA, even though it's farther north! The east coast migrators just zip up the coast and get into New England before any are seen in western PA. I'm not sure too many of them ever bother to work their way west and go across the mountains. Until someone can make a radio transmitter small enough to fit on a hummingbird, I think their exact migration paths are going to remain a mystery. All I know is that those of us in western PA and West Virginia were just about the last people to see hummingbirds, except, maybe for the folks who live at the very northernmost parts of their Canadian and US range. I know your post was light-hearted, Deb, and I'm being analytical, but it does fascinate me where these amazing little birds travel. It looks like your birds are coming from the east coast migrators, and ours in western PA are coming from the Mississippi river migrators. If your numbers are down, and it isn't just an unfortunate fluke for you, maybe something happened to the eastern population, but not to the western one. Maybe yours in the east are the ones that fly across the gulf and got affected by hurricanes. Maybe ours stayed over land and wintered in Mexico and were relatively unaffected. I don't know, but I'd sure like to. I'm afraid my birds are so spoiled rotten that it will be hard to convince them to fly over the mountains and on over to your yard. Tell you what, though, I'll try to talk them into flying east by mentioning all those Mountain Laurels and Rhododendrons they're missing!

Oh I love it. What a great picture. I'm new to planting for hummingbirds and am hoping that I might have one come to my yard this year. I did get my first feeder and a cross vine (no flowers this year) cardinal flower and jacob kline monarda. I will get lots more hummingbird plants for next year.