Ken I will try to answer at least some of your questions. First of all if you remember the vids I put up maybe a couple of weeks ago where all you saw at the feeders were adult males, well they dominated the front and back yards here and those guys are gone and that is all part of the migration Now let me back up, in the early spring the males are the first to arrive and the reason for migrating north is for breeding purposes only as it is too crowded and too much competion in mexico and central america where they winter. So when the males find an area or yard they like they will protect that against all other comers and will procede to mate with every female they can as the females begin to arrive shortly after the males. Then the nesting takes place and you wont see the females a lot during that period , nesting or incubation usually lasts between 15 and 22 days then if you are lucky you will start to see young ones and so on thru the summer. Now we fast forward a bit as the days begin to get shorter signals the migration south again and the males are first to leave as they have already started as I having a good quantity of males have witnessed. OK what is it about august? It is the extreme peak month of migration, let me explain it this way, consider a snowball beginning to roll down hill it starts off slowly gaining momentem as it goes till,,, while this migration is underway though they have to bulk up for the trip and you will see many big bellies at the feeders. At my place there will be so many hummers it will be almost a continuous frenzy at the feeders and plants. During these feeding periods these hummers may stay at one place 2 or 3 days at a place that offers a lot and they will bulk up and rest some then move on. Some people think they are seeing the same two or three birds at their place but most likely they are seeing different birds as they pass thru. Ken-- I would suspect that even though you have very little action up till now be aware in august especially the first couple of weeks after that the amount of hummers seems to gradually diminsh as the big push has moved thru, but there will still be a good amount, as the end of august approaches there will a noticable disappearence of hummers, its near the end. I dont know what you can expect , if you only see a couple now and then you might see half a dozen at once or more Im not sure. That is why I and others have urged you to keep up the good work you are doing. AUGUST!!!! I can make no guarantees how many you might see, but you should see more. I hope I have answered some of your questions.

Well Patty, we'll see about whose surprise "Scotty's Surprise" turns out to be. It certainly was mine -- for awhile! I didn't notice the bromeliad flower stalk until the day after you were here. You're Ms. Eagle-eye -- surprised you didn't spot it. Maybe it shot up over night?

I'm finishing off a 65' long french drain by topping it with a dry stream bed. I've covered the 57 gravel with more landscape cloth and then "river jacks". I suspect that there are various sizes of river rocks that can be call "river jacks" and my supplier has delivered two tons of rocks that range from small and round, larger flat and round and quite a few larger flat stones. If I order what they call 1-8" creek gravel it looks like very small to bigger (I guess 8"). Of course we're talking about a natural rock product and there probably will never be absolute consistency (this ain't Disney Land!) unless you spring for much higher priced hand-picked specialty rocks. Anyway, I've tried to find out why river jacks are called river jacks. And I'd love to know where they are "quarried". Anyone able to shed some light? Here's a photo of my delivery of river jacks. I've started to distribute them and realize that once I get the bigger ones placed I will be able to see how much they've covered and rearrange them to be as natural as I can manage. Then fill in with what I've got left (if any) and may need to get some of the 1-8" creek gravel to fill in for a fuller natural look and try to add some curves since there is only one since it started out as a much needed solution (french drain) for storm water runoff. I also plan to add some large round rocks from my rock collection to enhance the natural stream bed look.

It's natural stone; impossible to locate the same "lot" over a long period of time. You can try to come close by taking a few pieces to different shops and check against the current lots available.