Date: Sun, 9 Apr 2000 03:30:14 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Phil Davis Subject: They'reeee hereeee ... get your hummer feeders out! Comments: To: voice@capaccess.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed MD Ospreyers - FYI. Barbara got the message below from her sister in Bowie. A great sighting ... but not a record. March 27th is the earliest date in the Yellow Book. Frequently, this early in the season you will first find them buzzing around the hook where you normally kept your feeder last year. We understand from banding studies that they have great memories for feeding stations from year to year. The March 27th bird, as I recall, was one hovering around a feeder station even though the feeder hadn't been put up yet. The homeowners filled up a feeder and got it up ...and the bird tanked up. These may be north-bound birds that will keep passing through. The secrets of successful hummingbird feeding are (1) have lots of feeders, (2) get them up early in the year, (3) keep them up late in the year, and (4) keep the nectar clean and fresh. Early in the season you can mix the nectar much stronger if you want, to attract them to the max ... you can even go to a 1:1 ratio. (Studies have shown that there is no harmful affects from having nectar "too strong". No need for food coloring, however, especially if your feeder is red. Enjoy! Phil >Date: Sun, 09 Apr 2000 03:00:44 -0400 >To: Gloria Valentine >From: Barbara Davis >Subject: Re: hummers > >Wow!! We have had our feeder out for about a week or so now hoping for >hummers. I hope they are okay in this cold front. I could not believe >how quickly the temperature changed today! We will keep a sharp lookout >for them. In this weather, they can use all the fuel they can get. > >Thanks for the info!! > >Talk to you later. > >Barbara > > >At 09:32 PM 04/08/2000 -0700, you wrote: >>Barb, >> >>Just thought you guys would be interested to know that >>we saw two hummingbirds yesterday (Sat) just before >>the big cold front moved in. They were chasing each >>other across the neighbor's yard. This is probably the >>earliest that we have ever seen them in our >>neighborhood. >> >>Gloria ================================== Phil Davis Davidsonville, Maryland USA mailto:PDavis@ix.netcom.com ================================== ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================