For you guys that are suffering through the Summer heat.....

[Steve Sutton]

this should make you glad that you are smart enough to flee the cold when it arrives......

One of our December snows last year....find the Hummingbird....



Sort of like "find the Snake" with the trick here being that you'd never expect to see a Hummingbird in the snow....

Here's a closer shot....



For anyone intersted this is an Anna's Hummingbird...female...the odd one winters in the Puget Sound area but almost always near the water where the snow doesn't accumulate like this. This one spent the entire winter at our place, (we're at a bit over 1,000' and the snow accumulates here much deeper, and stays longer, than it does down in the valley). She made it through 13 consectutive days of below freezing nights with daytime temps never out of the 30's.....we kept the feeder from freezing by keeping a heat lamp on it. Interestingly she didn't sleep in the warmer air around the lamp even though she did spend a great deal of time under the lamp during the day....

Pretty tough for a bird that weighs just a bit more than a dime and they expect not to see after the temps drop below the 50's....

Steve

 

[Charlie S and Titan]

That is pretty cool. Not only a hummingbird in the snow, but also seeing one not in motion. We see hummingbirds of some sort her (ruby throated, maybe?) but never sitting still.

Thanks for sharing that.

Charlie

 

[Joe O]

Neat Steve.We have Hummers here spring through fall but even though we have mild winters,they don't hang around.
They about empty five feeeders every day,this time of year.

 

[Ed Askew]

Yeah isn't that interesting how the Annas can survive the winter and their relatives can't hack it. Maybe because they're bigger. We had them in California, and would go out and thaw the feeder for them after a freeze. Now in MS our Ruby Throats are always gone after mid October, although twice we've had a stray Rufous show up in the fall and once stayed until Nov. 15th.

Ed.