Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 20:23:49 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gail Mackiernan Subject: Re: Hummingbirds In-Reply-To: <1FF72964.68DA54B5.0016BA20@aol.com> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I think the opinion of folks in Louisiana is that the hummingbirds have probably always been coming into their state from the west, but that there *are* more of them now. And the increase in feeders probably has a lot to do with it. Also, learning by the birds to exploit new resources. However, I feel it is a bit unfair to imply that folks in the 70s and 80s did not know to look for hummers or any other vagrant out of range or out of season -- I know personally that they did! However, there weren't as many feeders and the "hummingbird garden" concept had not arrived, thus there probably *were* fewer hummingbirds in this area because there was less to attract or hold them. If you saw Sam Pancake's garden in the late 1980s (and I would bet it's about the same today) it was jam-packed with salvias, Mexican firecracker and a host of other hummingbird-friendly plants and (as I recall) no lawn! Maybe if we all followed his example we would be really surprised at what showed up! The moral of the story is to keep your eyes and your (birding) mind open. I recall Barry telling me the story of when, about 20 years ago, he went to the Pt. Mahon impoundment in Delaware. He met a fairly well-known birder leaving the impoundment's edge, and that fellow told Barry that the "best bird" out there were some Black Terns. Not quite. The best bird was a *White-winged* Black Tern (the first reported in USA for many years) which the fellow had not recognized -- maybe because he was not expecting such a rarity and his birding mind "saw" what he *had* expected, just some black terns. Gail Mackiernan and Barry Cooper Silver Spring, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================