the North remembers...

but I suspect it is a transient from up North.

We just have to make sure their food doesn’t freeze in the winter by bringing it in overnight or thawing it out in hot water.

I do take my feeders down in mid September to nudge them to be on their way. I don’t want them blindsided by a freak winter storm like we had last week. I can recall a few years back, an Anna’s hummer was stuck here all winter long because of an early winter snow storm...it found its way into a sun room in a home of an elderly couple who were able to feed it and keep it going until spring. The whole town was rooting for the little guy to make it.

I put mine up on April 1 and have guests within a week or so. I'm sure some of them have been here before. One year I was a little late hanging them up and I had a hummer come to the window where one usually hangs and look around. Since there was nothing else there to attract him, I'm pretty sure he remembered the feeder.

It’s funny each had their own way of drinking, we named them by their drinking habits. Gazer, he would drink then just sit there and look around...next was bomber.....he’d drink go into our tree and wait in ambush for one of the other hummers to come in, then he dive bomb it then fly back to the tree. Then there’s flutterer.....he would never sit, he’d just flutter when drinking and then fly away. We never got more then three this year......everyone in our neighborhood feeds them so I was just thrilled we did get those three. Will miss them got such joy watching them all summer.

The office is located on an old Army base that's being developed. There are a lot of houses being built now, but I probably have the only feeders up in a half mile radius, so I have lots of activity. It's not unusual to see 6-8 birds at a time squabbling over whose turn it is. By midsummer many of them will share, but when the fall migration begins, they get argumentative again.

Even in the garden. Really weird. Saw a few on the feeders in spring, but nothing since.

I did see the one and only Monarch butterfly in the field last week. I've ordered milkweed seeds.

Sorry to hear that!