Date:         Tue, 9 Dec 2003 10:24:40 -0500
Reply-To:     Maryland Birds & Birding <MDOSPREY@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM>
Sender:       Maryland Birds & Birding <MDOSPREY@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM>
From:         Steve Huy <Gabboon@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Re: SI hummers
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It's time to get a grip on reality!  Have these birds not been surviving the cold? What makes you think they are doomed or need our help?  They are surviving just fine. Little is known about their winter life, but researchers are finding that these hummingbirds can and do survive our winters - that perhaps the species is adapting to it.  They have been banded, let nature take its course, and perhaps they will return next year. If they don't survive they were not meant to.





<I've been thinking about this too--it's one of the reasons I don't like viewing poor vagrants, doomed to die. I know it's all part of nature but I couldn't help but thinking about alternatives. One which came to mind was placing the birds in the National Botanic Garden  buildings for the winter. I would think they could survive just fine with feeders and a large space for them to fly about.

Arlene Ripley
Calvert County, MD (but on the "other" coast at the moment)

At 12:21 AM 12/9/03, Ruth Culbertson wrote:
>Is there a place the hummingbirds could be housed to keep them safe so 
>they'd survive the winter? I've just been reading a book called "Rosie, 
>My Rufous Hummingbird" by Arnette Heidcamp, who kept a stray 
>hummingbird in a sunroom in her house (in upstate New York) over the 
>winter and released it in the spring. I'm starting to worry about the 
>little guys/girls in the Ripley Garden. I'd like them to survive.
>

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