The Hummingbird Show

Coming to you from Studio A Here at proven winner's color choice Shrubs. It's
time for the Gardening Simplified Radio YouTube and podcast show with Stacy Hervella, me,
Rick Weist, and our engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson. Like all birds,
hummingbirds have basic habitat requirements including food, water, shelter, and space
to forge and breed in order to thrive. And we all love to see
hummingbirds playing in our yards and our landscape and our space, and we want
to try to attract these. I'm going to call them pugnacious birds, small
but packing a punch. It's no stretch that synonyms for pugnacious are fitting bellicos,
chippy, feisty, even gladiatorial when in Rome do as the Romans do,
and Stacy, they are evidence, however, that there is a direct
correlation between the health and diversity of your landscape in the wildlife that it attracts.
I love that. That's always good to hear. Beautiful and colorful.
Coming up on today's show suggested hummingbird attracting plants and interviews with nationally recognized hummingbird
experts Alan Shartier and Sherry Williamson author of a field guide to hummingbirds of North
America with us on our liveline to kick things off is our very own birdman,
Bill Stovell. And Bill, we've talked recently about bird houses and nesting
and that sort of thing. But hummingbirds aren't necessarily interested in a house.
They like to live out on the limb and their travelers, aren't they.
That's a fact. Yes, they make a little nest up on a flat
spot on a limb, off and on a white, fine limb before I've
seen them, and they're the prettiest little nests. They just a little tiny
thing. They make them out of fighter webs and out of lichens and out
of little bits of fluff they find. And the inside of the nests is
about the size of a quarter. Wow, really small. Yeah, you're
so right, Bill, because I had read somewhere the eggs of the hummingbird
are no bigger than let's say, the size of a navy bean. And
that soft, almost expandable nest using spider webs lichens, as Bill had mentioned,
Stacy, I think many people have never seen a hummingbird nest. Well,
they're deliberately, very careful about where they put it. Because they are
so little and they don't have a lot of defenses, so they're not going
to you know, dive bomb you like the famous red wing blackbirds of Grand
Rapids defending their nest. You know, so they need to be very sneaky
about it. Oh, and talk about travel bill migration. You take the
ruby throat at hummingbird found in the Eastern US crossing the Gulf of Mexico every
year. You know, it migrates between overwintering sites in central Mexico and summer
breeding grounds in the Eastern US. And then you take the rufous hummingbird that
travels thousands of miles and I mean thousands of miles. Think about over wintering
in Mexico and spending your summers in Alaska. Unbelievable the territory these birds cover.
That's amazing too. You know, they binge before they go. They
double their weight, wow, so that they have enough energy to make it
go. They just eat and eat and eat, and all of a sudden,
they can fly those long distances without stopping. Wow. So they fly
without stopping, so they don't you know, stop in southern California or the
flower fields of central California for a little break on the way. Oh they
could, I mean they don't. They're not starved. I've got plenty of
energy to get there. That's amazing. You know. One interesting thing I've
observed with the hummingbirds is that they of course feed by day on nectar from
flowers. So we're talking about annuals and perennials, tree shrubs, vines,
but also insects are important to hummingbirds, fruit flies, gnats. I've even
heard of hummingbirds consuming tree sap am, I correct in that bird man.
A good portion of the of the protein they get is from the insects,
so there's a big factor. Thirty to forty percent of their diet is little
insects. But all your plants, of course attract all these little insects too.
You look at the data on hummingbirds and how fast their heart races and
their wings flap. They have to have some high energy fuel to be able
to function well. They have to have high energy fuel because it seems to
me at times they only eat so they can get enough energy to fight off
their predators or other predators. But they're competitors, they're each other, right,
I mean, they pack a lot of rage into those little bodies.
Yes, they do pugnacious right. The best way to support hummingbirds and other
pollinators in your area, of course, is to plant nectar plants. But
this is interesting. Some scientists suggest the presence of feeders may impact natural pollination
of plants alter hummingbird behavior. There are other people who say, no,
no, no, no. Feeders help bolster hummingbird populations by counteracting the loss
of forage and habitat caused by human activity. I guess there's some debate on
this matter. I mean camp number two very strongly, because when the hummingbirds
come back, sometimes there isn't enough blossom availability, but they can start with
sugar water until the insects increase and the flowers increase to maintain their their their
health. So it's it's a it's a twofold area and it's so simple.
And it's also helped people recogni the birds and have the entertainment of having them
in their side yard in front of the window, and that encourages them to
plant things that will keep them in the yard. No, absolutely, you
know, seeing them and starting to appreciate them really is the first step to
you know, conservation and making sure that you are doing the right thing.
And you know, I find I have a combination of both as well.
I have a lot of plants that attract hummingbirds through in bloom you know,
from spring until fall, and a bunch of feeders. And I'll tell you,
when they visit the yard, they make use of both. They're not
just like one or the other. They're they're browsing the buffet, they're coming
up to the dessert table. They're doing it all. Yeah, And if
you think about it, we talked about diversity in the landscape. Sure,
nectar flowers in the landscape, but they want trees in order to build their
nests. There's certain plants that they want to help build their nests, like
lambs eer is a plant in the landscape that I've heard hummingbirds use. So,
again, build diversity in the landscape is pro probably going to help attract
these these beautiful birds to your yard. That's a fact. Now, this
this is an international show. So the ruby throats are basically east of the
Mississippi, but there are fifteen species west of the Mississippi, particularly in the
Southwest, and there are places that there are centers where they just put up
these these beautiful gardens and these sugar water feeders, and they just flooded with
many species of the huntingbird at the same time. It's amazing many different species.
You are correct, and we'll talk to Sherry Williamson about that also,
Birdman in summer. Sometimes people will send me pictures or video of this cool
hummingbird that they saw in their landscape and reality it wasn't a hummingbird at all.
It was a moth right at think spot. Yes, they're a wonderful
little thing. They're gorgeous and that will show up and they're just they just
buzz around and they're just studis can be so, but they're they're not a
bird, no, but they can. You know, I have I am.
I feel like I'm a good bird observer, and I have been momentarily
thrown by a clear wing mouth or sphinx moth because they they kind of hover
in browse plants and of course the same plants the hummingbirds would in the same
way. And you know, you you you experienced that with the right person,
They're not even going to believe you that it wasn't a bird bird.
Well, there they're the ecological gap between hummers are the gap between birds and
bees because they do an awful lot of pollinating while they're doing the getting their
staff. Definitely, absolutely, absolutely birdman. As I mentioned coming up on
the show Sherry Williamson and the North American Guide to Hummingbirds Peterson's Guide. You
had a chance to meet mister Peterson, Yeah, more than once, and
he was a very high energy guy, a big man, and just bubbled
with enthusiasm. He's a fabulous artist and his research on his first first book,
which was nineteen forty nineteen thirty nine, nineteen forty seven, nineteen sixty
seven, was the original Bible of birding, and it had a lot to
do and there was a lot about hummingbirds in that. So it's easy to
say he was one of your inspirations as a birder, as a naturalist,
as somebody who enjoys and loves conservation in the landscape, probably one of your
influences. Well, I grew up in Western New York, which is real
close to Cornell, and we had a lot of Cornell people, and he
was from Chautauqua Lake, an area, and it was kind of a birding
center where I came from, and so it was a lot of fun to.
I have several monitaris there in my Hamburg, New York area to help
me on its path. So I've been doing birding ever since I've a little
kid. That's fantastic bird man. We appreciate you, thanks for getting us
started. Today it's going to be the big humming Bird Show. And coming
up next Stacey and I will share with you some favorites that we use to
attract hummingbirds to our landscape. That's coming up next here on the Gardening Simplified
Show. Proven Winners, Color Choice Shrubs cares about your success in the garden.
That's why we trial and test all of our shrubs for eight to ten
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and the distinctive white container at your local garden center. Greetings, gardening friends,
and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show, The Hummingbirds Simpler Show.
If you can simplify them, they are quite complex and fascinating creatures. And
you know, I think one thing that is truly amazing about hummingbirds that a
lot of people don't realize is that they are only found in the Americas.
So if you are abroad, if you're in another country, you will not
see hummingbirds. Interest. There are some similar ish birds in other tropical countries,
but for the most part, they are uniquely ours. And they're one
of those plants that if you ever are looking at like birding groups online on
Facebook or forums, you know, that's like when people from Europe come to
the US, that's what they hope to see is a hummingbird. Lucky us,
right, and they have starlings. We have humming birds, right,
So like the ruby throated hummingbird for us is just like, you know,
such a lifer for them, such a bird that they would truly desire to
see. And so I always think, you know, especially in later summer
when they're going bananas in my yard, just like, oh, if only
one of those people could just like come in here and just see how wonderful
they are. And so I think it's important that we don't lose sight of
how amazing it is that we have them, especially in the north. You
know. It's one thing. Of course, in the southwest, where the
climate is much more amenable with year round food, we don't have that.
But it is plants on trial. So of course we're talking about plants and
hummingbirds, and I grow a huge diversity of plants. I mean, one
of my main criteria for adding a plant to my garden is does it,
you know, somehow support intacts or birds, and so a lot of plants
that I happen to have do. Actually, So I've seen the hummingbirds recently
visiting my nepada. My cat's me out epaa. They are loving that,
sampling all sorts of other things. All my annuals I specifically buy for hummingbirds.
So yeah, that's me. That's a good way to like get money's
worth out of them. And again diversity. Yeah, this morning, Yes,
I saw hummingbirds at my nepotas in the backyards. Yeah, they're having
a gradile. They're they eat hugara. They feed on hucraa flowers, which
a lot of people, you know, they think kukraa, oh that foliage
plant if you have a good one for flowering. They love the flowers on
yukra. And I didn't believe that would be the case since they're so close
to the ground, you know, the hugra of flowers. But I have
seen it myself and I can attest and you know, when I was thinking
about what plants are put on trial today. I had a couple. I
mean, we have many different shrubs that attract hummingbirds and sustain hummingbirds through the
season. But I was thinking about an experience I had two weeks ago.
I was staying with some friends in ann Arbor, and they have a kind
of a unique landscape where their house is like a split level and so you
look down onto sort of a cavernous driveway and they have all these cascading plants
coming over their driveway. And I was looking out the window and there were
some wigilla down there that were absolutely mobbed with hummingbirds. Now that shouldn't really
be surprising because waijilla have all the trademark characteristics of being a good hummingbird food
plant, trumpet shaped flowers, that kind of pink red color family typically,
although there are some white varieties out there, but I had never really seen
them like making so much use out of the whitejela. And I thought,
I can see it, Yeah, I can see it. And I thought,
well, why don't I have a whitegela because this is kind of great.
And when you are thinking about, you know, adding a whitela,
it's important to think about these spring flowering plants, you know, like Birdman
was just saying that you need to have food sources for them from when they
arrive in here in Michigan. That's usually late April, like the last week
of April or thereabouts, you know, and especially then it's important because it's
cold and they need to refuel after their long journey. So we need plants
that, you know, sometimes all the summer stuff gets all the credit,
you know, like your canas of course for us not blooming until summer.
So it's really good when you're thinking about this diversity. It's not just a
diversity of plant types, it's a diversity of bloom times. And for people
keeping score at home, when I drove up to the studio today, Stacey,
the Woogella were just in full bloom and gorgeous here in Michigan right now.
Yeah, they are an absolute peak bloom. And so there's such a
great choice for that. And when I was thinking about which of our white
Gela is to put on trial today, I decided on snippet dark pink Whitjela,
and I picked this one for two main reasons. I mean, we've
already established whyjela are great for hummingbirds. But I picked this particular one for
two main reasons. Number one, it is a reblooming why gula. Okay,
so it's gonna bloom now along with all the other white gela, and
then it's gonna take a little bit of a break and put on more new
growth, and in that period, as much new growth as it puts on,
it will be able to create additional flowers on to bloom throughout summer.
Fabulous. So with reblooming whitedela like Snippet dark Pink or Arsonic Bloom series,
you're getting that much longer window of a food source without really having to do
anything or take up more space or anything like that. So that's one thing
I really like in terms of finding a why igela to accommodate hummingbirds. And
then the second one is, as you may yes by that name Snippet dark
pink, this is a very small whitela, and some older wiglas they get
really large, and so people I think, you know a lot of times
they have a nostalgic connection to Iigella, but they are thinking of like,
you know, their gramma's wigelo and they were growing up, which a They
were probably like two and a half feet tall at the time, so the
things seemed extra big and be the older varieties were legitimately quite large, large
woody, flopping over intimidate right. So snippet dark pink reaches just one to
two feet tall and wide. So this is a whigella that if you're looking
for ways to attract hummingbirds and you're short on space, so you have a
condo, an apartment, a balcony, something like that, this is a
plant that is going to take up very little space but give you a lot
of bang for your buck. And of course the flowers have that nice dark
pink color. We many of us know that hummingbirds are more attracted to like
the red dark pink color range, although they're not particularly picky, you know.
We were just talking about them being on NEPAA, which is blue,
bluish purple, and so it's a great choice I think for all of those
characteristics to just kind of tuck into your gar and you want to put it
in full sun like most way Gula it is a full sun plant and then
just sit back and watch the hummingbirds come by. You sold me. I'm
going to add snippet to my landscape. Now again, we've talked about this
a number of times already today, diversity and you know favorite hummingbird plants,
would Youila, You're right, absolutely has to be on that list. Do
you have a couple of other really go tos that you really think this one?
I mean, I think Kufia is one. Yeah, you know,
I love my kufia, and vermillionaire Cufia from proven Winters is one that I
have to grow every year because of the hummingbirds. You know, they don't
so I put those right on either side of my back door, and they
don't tend to feed at them quite a lot until later in the season and
then they're just like you know, they're just crazed for food. Sure,
and so in that case then I see them a lot. But it's still,
you know, just because I don't see them doesn't mean that they're not
there. So cufias it must have for me. Any kind of selvia,
and I know you're a selvia person too. Salvia big time. Looking forward
to twenty twenty five unplugged red Salvia dynamic cultivar of our native scarlet sage.
Looking forward to this proven winner's plant but any of the unplugged or rockin series
of salvias from proven winners. And then of course, yes, Stacy,
I am the can of King and canas are my go to for humming Well,
you know, talk about a red flowers. I mean there are cannons
with other flowers, but the classic one that you have, that red flower
is irresistible to them, and it's nice and tall, and I think that
having that height difference, having a lot of different heights is also good for
them. I mean, I'm always surprised to see them get so close to
the ground, but you know they'll be They're still going to be very cautious
about predators or you know, anything like that. So they do also tend
to like plants that flower a little bit higher in the sky. I am
actually trying a new annual this year. I don't know if you're familiar with
it, Hummingbird Falls Salvia. And this is a what they're calling a hanging
basket salvia. I've never grown up, so instead of growing up right like
other salvia's, it's actually cascading and so you do see it in hanging baskets.
I did not get it in a hanging basket I just got like a
standalone one gallon that I'm going to put into a container in my hummingbird garden.
I'm very excited to try that. And you know, this isn't a
plant, but I have. I did something almost life changing this week,
and a small thing almost life changing. I can't yet speak to spreaking news
simplified show let's hear it. I can't yet speak to how it's gonna affect
the humming birds. But my mom was showing me this video of a woman
who lives out in California and creates all these wacky solar fountains for hummingbirds and
they love to bathe in them. And so I had this bird feeder or
this bird bath that I loved, but it was really deep and not convenient
for the birds because it was too deep. They couldn't get in it.
I tried putting rocks, it was a pain to clean. I bought a
solar bird bath fountain, and all you do is you fill up the bird
bath and you put this thing in there, and like even as soon as
I took it outside, it's just like it's like whoa son, I'm going
It has all these different little nozzles that you can put on it. It
is amazing. Now. I just put this up over the weekend last weekend,
so right now. So I haven't been able to say for sure because
it takes them some time. And this is true if you put up you
know, a feeder or anything like that, it takes some time to feel
comfortable. Sure, they stake it out for a bit first, but I'm
pretty confident that this is going to be a hummingbird game changer, and even
if it isn't, honestly, it's a lot of fun. We were playing
around with the nozzles, changing them out and as long as it's sunny,
you're good to go. So between the bird bath and the unplugged red salvia
for twenty twenty five, wow, Yeah, the game change decked out.
It is getting decked out for the hummingbirds. Yeah, and that's what I
love too. And you know what, all of these things at the end
of the day, they're good for the hummingbirds, but they're good for you
too, because it's great to just have a lot of flowers in your yard,
not just for the hummingbirds, but for bees and other you know,
insects and things that visit the garden and and then your yard looks better and
you feel like a garden rock star. So it's win win when it's just
win all around. So whatever you can do to improve your garden for hummingbirds,
whether that is planting Snippet Dark Pink Way Jela or one of the many
Proven Winners annuals that sustain hummingbirds, or maybe adding a solar fountain to an
unused bird bath, it's all good. We're going to take a little break.
When we come back, we have got a guest, so please stay
tuned. At Proven Winner's Color Choice, We've got a shrub for every taste
and every space. Whether you're looking for an easy care rose and unforgettable hydrangea
or something new and unique, you can be confident that the shrubs and the
white containers have been trialed and tested for your success. Look for them at
your local garden center. You know, I love my Cooper Million. It's
our privilege. And Alan he is the Michigan hummingbird guy. He's been interested
in science and nature since he was five years old and began bird watching when
he was eleven, and now that includes wow birding trips to twenty eight countries.
Has birded in all fifty US states. Alan is an amazing photographer.
He's been a bird bander since nineteen ninety seven and a hummingbird bander since two
thousand when he began the Great Lakes Hummernet Research Project. Alan, it's a
privilege and a pleasure to have you on the Gardening Simplified Show. Well,
thank you for inviting me. Alan. Can you start off by talking to
our listeners and our viewers about bird banding, specifically hummingbirds, why it's important
and give us an idea of what that process is like. Well, I'll
try to be brief. Bird Banding is a research tool that has been used
for well over one hundred years guarded with banding of waterfowl, and it helped
to work out the migration corridors of migrating ducks and geese, and the hunters
would shoot the birds and the numbers would get recorded, and so you'd find
out where the bird was banded, where it was shot, and pieced together
their migration routes. It's come a long way since then, but it still
is basically an aluminum ring of band placed on a bird's leg with a unique
number on it, so that when it's found one way or another, either
shot as in a duck or recaptured as in maybe another hummingbird bander on the
Gulf Coast of Texas. That number can be reported back to the US Geological
Survey's bird banding Lab. And this is a highly regulated activity that requires a
lot of training. You have to have valid research project in order to become
a bird bander. And there are probably the ducks and geese and things that's
all kind of vn rs and fish and wildlife does that. But songbirds.
There are maybe two or three thousand of US across North America that do different
kinds of projects with songbirds, and there's only about one hundred of US who
do hummingbirds because it requires a special permit beyond the regular songbird permit and special
training. And there are different reasons for that, but it's you know,
they're small. A lot of it has to do with the fact that they're
very small birds, and safety is priority one with all of these research projects.
You want to make sure that you know, if you're going to put
a band on a bird to learn something about it, that the birds are
not harmed or in any way or there's no detrimental effect, So you want
to figure out their longevity and their migration routs and things like that. So
being highly trained to be as safe as possible is all part of the process.
And just how tiny is a band for a hummingbird? So I do
PowerPoint programs for garden clubs and bird clubs, and I have a PowerPoint presentation
showing one of these bands on the tip of my finger, and that's really
the best way to see how small they are. So I mean, if
I tell you that the bands are roughly two millimeters in diameter and one point
four millimeters tall, that sounds small, but when you see it on my
finger in a photo, it's really really small. A band that we put
on a chickadee is like eight times bigger. Wow, that's amazing. And
the bands are for songbirds come to us in the envelopes in strings of one
hundred on a wire and they're stamped and curled into a you know, a
ring. The hummingbird bands come to us on a flat sheet. They have
to cut them out with special tools and file them down and pet them to
size, so we actually have to make them versus you know, that's where
the special training comes in, so you need to have really good close vision,
which I've been near sighted. I've worn glasses since I was eight years
old, and so working with tiny things has been kind of second nature to
me. But you have to make the bands so that they the right size.
They won't be too tighter or too large and stuff off and no sharp
edges and all that stuff. So but yeah, they're very tiny. People
often ask me how much do they weigh? My scale way to the tenth
of a gram, and I don't know. I put one on it registers
zero. Other people telling me they weigh like eight milligrams or something like that,
so about eight thousands of a gram. So they're very very light,
don't impede the bird bird's movement or flight in any way. And you know,
all the other bands for all the other birds are also generally made out
of aluminum, except for in some cases, like cardinals have a really powerful
bite, they have to use stainless steel bands for some of those birds because
they can just smash the aluminum with their bags. Interesting, we're talking to
Alan Shartier and he is the Michigan hummingbird Guy. Now the link to his
website. We're gonna put that at our website, Gardening Simplified on air dot
com, and those of you watching on YouTube, you can see some of
that information on your screen also because there are links there that describe some of
this work that Alan does as well as incredible pictures that he takes from northern
flickers to tree swallows and yellow warblers on his Flicker account. That link is
there on his account. Also important work that you do with banding. Alan.
For our listeners and our viewers, someone who has a backyard, loves
flowers and plants, a word of advice for our listeners as far as hummingbirds
are concerned, and what you've learned through the years, how can we appreciate
them best? How can we support hummingbird populations well? As a hummingbird researcher,
I am not home very much, and as a photographer, I really
am into wildflowers of all kinds. So I don't have a really good background
in gardening because I'm not home long enough to do any of it. But
having spoken to lots and lots of garden clubs and familiar with a whole lot
of other researchers who work on this, it's good to have a home that
is a yard that is a little bit scruffy for wildlife in general. Really
manicured spot is not going to be that good for wildlife in general. And
I like to promote the nectar sources from flowers, and you can put bird
feed hummingbird feeders up as well, with the realization that you know, the
hummingbird feeders are mostly for you to be able to see them closer. The
nectar sources. I like to promote native plants primarily, although there are a
lot of non native plants that hummingbirds really do like as well, and there's
some other plants that are kind of in between. So for example, the
trumpet vine is a very well known among hummingbird enthusiasts plant. It's got five
inch long red tubular flowers and it needs support in full sun, and it
grows up on a trellis or a fence really well. But it's not native
as far north as Michigan, but it is native to North America. Other
plants like hostas are native to Japan, but they are hummingbirds like them too,
And then of course all kinds of native species like cardinal flower, columbines,
and then verbenas and lobelias and things like that. Turtle head, wild
bergamot, things like that are also very good. A plant that grows in
wet places is it's called jewel weed or spotted touch me not, and most
people don't put that in the garden because it needs to be wet. But
it looms in fall during my fall migration of hummingbirds, and the hummingbird is
an important pollinator of that plant. So keeping all of this in mind is
keeping Tubular plants are the primary interest to hummingbirds. Generally, they don't like
to feed from open flat plants, you know. One one exception would be
impatience. People often have impatience hanging from their their porches or and so forth,
and the hummingbirds will go to those, and they'll go to petunia's as
well. But flat plants like daisies tend to have a lot of insects,
stinging insects landing on them, and there's a lot of competition for the hummy
birds. The tugular plants allow the hummingbirds to stick its beak in there and
have privacy while it licks out that little micro lead of nectar. Well,
nobody else can get at it, and so they can go in there and
visit flower after flower after flower. So the tubular nature of the flower is
important, and red is on the hummingbird feeders, but our ruby thryer hummingbirds
are not necessarily don't require red plants. You know, some of these lobilies
are blue or purple, the columbines are red and yellow, the turtle heads
there's white ones. And so the hummingbirds will find the nectar if you put
a variety of these kinds of things in your yard and also try to find
things that bloom. From finding things that bloom in May is difficult in Michigan,
but throughout the summer and into the fall, hummingbirds are used to nectar
sources coming and going because there's no plant that blooms all all growing season.
Along if you have things that will replace, you know, when your columbines
whether and die out, you've got maybe a verbena or maybe a bergamot coming
in later, and then maybe the lobelias, and then maybe even your jewel
weeds coming in later. So if you have things that kind of cycle through
the season, your hummingbirds will always have some nectar sources. And then of
course they have a fairly large range, so half a mile to three quarters
of a mile, So they're not just visiting your garden much as you might
like to think that you're your birds. They're going out into the woodlands nearby,
and they're they're finding the native plants out there as well, and they're
eating insects too, so insects are also an important part of their diet.
So keeping your garden pesticide free is important. Even though you might not want
insects, the hummingbirds want them, and they like the tiny flying insects.
Then the pesticides will go into the root system and into the nectar and into
the hummingbirds, so you want to avoid doing that too. Wow. That
was incredible, really well said, and we appreciate that. Alan. We
we have been talking to Alan Shartier and if you're interested in learning more,
his website is great go to it. We have the link at Gardeningsimplified on
air dot com or right here on YouTube on your screen. Alan. Thank
you so much for what you do for for birding and we appreciate your time
here on the Gardening Simplified shows are most even close for sure. I know
I like your primarily although lovers and there's so For example, the trumpet vine
is a very well known among The Gardening Simplified Show is brought to you by
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at your local garden center. Welcome back to the Gardener Simplified Show. Today,
for our branching news segment, we have the privilege to chat with Sherry
Williamson. She is a naturalist, ornithologist, conservationist, birder writer, author,
artist. Sherry and her husband and colleague Tom Wood, moved to Arizona
to work as live in managers of the Nature Conservancy's Ramsey Canyon Preserved through nineteen
ninety five. So her more recent work has been restoring and managing the gardens
at ash Canyon Birds Sanctuary, a birding hotspot just a few miles from Ramsey.
Sherry is the author of a Peterson Field Guide to Hummingbirds of North America.
It was originally published in two thousand and two, and she's currently working
on a revision of a field Guide to Hummingbirds for North America. Sherry,
thank you so much for joining us on the Gardening Simplified Show. Thank you
so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here. I loved listening
to a podcast an interview that you did when you said, I have you've
mentioned that you consider hummingbirds a gateway drug to nature and conservancy. I love
that because I have often said in the garden industry, tomatoes and peppers are
the gateway drug to garden. There are a lot of gateway drugs out there,
of the good kind, Yes, exactly. So gardening and birdie and
conservation are all very a wholesome thing. So we're glad to have those kinds
of gateway drugs in our lives. Absolutely. Now, of course, all
of the links to Sherry's website and the many things that she does, including
her book, you'll find them. We're going to link them to our website,
Gardening Simplified on air dot com. But Sherry, I was reading in
your blog, I was fascinated by this. You say, hummingbirds truly are
masters of color, creating more hues and iridescence than any other birds combined,
or all other birds combined. That's quite a statement, it is. You
know, that was the result of a relatively recent study where they analyze the
colors found in birds, and you think about many, many colors that are
produced by pigments, but also the incredible rainbow of colors produced by iridescence.
But humming birds, they found, have their colors occupy a broader range of
the spectrum than any other birds do. And what's even more amazing, though,
is that that spectrum goes beyond the colors that we humans can see.
We only have three kinds of visual pigments in our eyes. Hummingbirds have four,
and they can see they can see colors into what we consider the ultra
violet, into what we consider the intra red. They have incredible color discrimination.
So it kind of makes sense that ViRGE in general, but humming birds
in particular, would have these incredible ranges of color within their plumage. But
hummingbirds with their mastuator doesn't. They've locked up the title of the most colorful
birds on Earth. Well, they're the only green bird we have here in
the North. That's one thing that I've eard green bird, which I think
says a lot. You know, we have a rainbow of everything else.
We got our cardinals, we got our orioles, we got a lot of
yellow, But they're really the only true green bird that's not waterfowl that we
can enjoy here in the North. Yeah, green is kind of a hard
color to produce. It, So for most birds, green has to a
combination of a structural blue color combined with the yellow pigments and the things you
female painted burning for example, have that green jay down in South Texas and
into the tropics of that. But most birds produce those greens, if they
have greens at all, by iridescent, and often they're dark greens or more
subtle greens like what's the green and a green wind field for example. But
the humming birds, of course, most of our hummingbirds in North America have
green on them somewhere. That's one of the common questions we did about hummingbird
at indication is I saw this hummingbird in my arts and they had a green
back. What kind was it? That doesn't narrow it down much? But
green, of course makes perfect sense for a tiny little bird that has a
lot of enemies, lots of things like to eat hummingbirds from birds that prey
on other birds and mammals that prey on other birds, and snakes and stuff
all the way to some large insects, things like praying mand it's like to
prey on hummingbirds as well, so that green color helps it camouflage them when
they're not trying to be conspicuous like males in their courtship display in your studies,
Sherry, along that line in our first segment, I mentioned that I
consider hummingbirds to be pugnacious or feisty or shippy, and of course the amazing
bills on these birds. Can those bills do physical damage? In other words,
you know, when when they're fighting, is it just belligerent posturing or
are they actually doing physical damage? Some of that depends on the species of
hummingbird we're talking about. That bill is its main purpose, of course,
is to probe flowers to extract necker and it's full of nerve endings and blood
vessels. It's not just like a young foothpeck or something on the front of
their head. It's full of living tissue and very very sensitive. So it's
a little problematic to use something like that as a weapon. However, there
are a few tropical hummingbirds that have some adaptations that make their that weaponize those
food probes. Basically, some of the hermit humming birds, the male have
sharp little hooks on the tips of the built and they'll use those to rip
feathers out of each other. They will sometimes poke each other and inflect minor
stab wounds, not like you know, piercing somebody with a rapier or something,
but they can do some damage with those buildings. Only sometimes when we're
when I'm handling humming bird as we're banding humming birds during the studies with the
Southeastern Arizona Bird Observatory, which are license permitted by the Bird Banding Laboratory of
the US Geological Service, sometimes I'll come pollen birds that have conspicuous bruises or
a little bits of form skin on their chips. Not very often, but
most of the damage they do is just ripping feathers out of each other.
But it certainly is a possibility now down there in southeast southeastern Arizona. How
many species of hummingbird are you able to enjoy? We have fifteen species on
a semi regular to very regular basis. We've got about a half dozen breeding
species that are quite common and widespread. Uh and a few others that are
are you know, less common, much less common. But if you know
the place to find them, you can find them. And then we also
have lots of migrants. It's one of the special things about being where we
are is that we're we're in that zone where Mexico meets the US, where
the north meets to the south, where the tropics meet the temperate zone.
Also where the mountains meets the desert, where are real crossroads of geography and
and habitat. So we get you know, rufus and coliope hummingbirds as migrants
we cashunk at Allen's coming over from California. But we have as breeding birds
we've got and as in coasters and black tenned and broad builds and broad tails,
and ribbles and blue sort of mountain gyms, occasionally white eared humming bird
occasionally barrely humming. Now I have a question. So here in the north,
where we really only have room throats, we and my mom has noticed
this too. My mom learn appreciate, learn my appreciation of hummingbirds. For
my mom and my grandparents, so they tend to be very, very territorial
and like you would not. It's very rare that I would see two retirated
hummingbirds on any of my feeders at any one time, Like it just doesn't
happen, Like they perch and wait to chase each other away. But you
can look, you know, on YouTube or Instagram or anywhere and see these
videos coming from California, from Arizona of multiple you know, hummingbirds just mobbing
feeders and mobbing yards. And is that a matter of different species? Is
it just that they are more comfortable there, there's less competition for food.
What explains that of actually a lot of that and the more competition for food
because when food is scarce, we do see hummingbirds coming to feeders in a
lot larger numbers and being more tolerant of one another. Oh interesting. Yeah.
One of the most amazing spectacles of hummingbird feeding that I ever saw,
just in the fact that it was this real peaceable kingdom situation was in New
Mexico at the world famous busket Alipachi National Wildlife Refuge. It was a summer
visit during the breeding season for their resident blackchin hummingbirds, and it was a
very dry year, really drought stricken area. Everything was brown and dry,
not a lot of flower next for the birds, so they were depending Even
though the marshes and water impoundments that Busky provide a lot of insects for the
birds to eat, they were depending on feeders for their sugar, for the
energy from the sugar to help power their very active lifestyle. For especially for
the females as they were nesting and their feeders. At the visitors center at
Bosky, there were often a dozen or more birds around each feeder. There
were birds that were sitting next to one another feeding out of the same feeder
port, and sometimes a third bird would come in from above to feed.
Wow, these were These were all females, so they were getting along a
lot better than the male and the most important thing for each of them,
since each of them had young ones depending on them, the most important thing
for them was to get that energy, get back to that nest and take
care of their kids. They didn't have time for fighting. No time for
fighting. You will see during migration. You will see the females whos pugnacious
and ferrocious to the males. But a lot of that territoriality breaks down when
resources are scarce. Everybody's dependent on the same narrow range of resources, and
everybody's got that very important business of getting the kids bed and pledged and out
on their own. Now I have that reminded me another question I have.
So, when hummingbirds have young in the nest, are they feeding them on
nectar that they're just like storing somewhere in their mouths or beaks, or do
they collect insects for their young? How are they getting food back to their
young? It's both, and like other birds, hummingbirds carry their well,
most of the birds carry their food in their crop, which is an expandable
part of their esophagus. It performs the storage function of our own stomachs,
but it kind of keeps the food outside the bird's main body, so it
serves a little bit different different anatomical function in that it's hanging off the bird's
neck. Basically, if you've ever seen pictures of African vultures around a zebra
kill or something, you see this big, fleshy looking bulge on their necks.
That's the crop where the food is stored before it goes down into the
gizzard and gets processed and ground up and then into the intestines. Where all
the nutrients are extracted. So when we are looking at these breeding female hummingbirds,
they will have often very distended crops, and those crops will be full
of insects, but there will also often be nextor in there as well.
A lot of it depends on what stage their babies are at. When the
babies are very small, they mostly need the nutrition that they're going to get
from insects and spiders and other animal foods. They've got to have the proteins,
the minerals to build their strong bones. All those little micronutrients of various
kinds, the amino acids and all of that vitamins and all that have to
be in their food, their baby food essentially, so for them to grow
on and they grow so rapidly, they need a lot. But if they
get bigger and their little wings start to develop, they start to grow on
their wings and start flapping their wings so they can strengthen their muscles and grow
their muscles to make it possible for them to take that first light. Mom
is giving them more and more nectar to provide that sugar energy that they need
to power that increase metabolis. During that later stage of nestling period. We're
chatting with Sherry Williamson. She is the author of a Peterson Field Guide to
Hummingbirds of North America and at the Ash Canyon Birdsanctuary. I want to ask
you about that bird sanctuary, Sherry, But prior to that, Stacey had
mentioned the ruby throated hummingbirds here along the lake shore in West Michigan. Of
course, I enjoy a number of them in my landscape. I've always had
this imagination in fall of them migrating and traveling over the Gulf of Mexico,
and I've often wondered is that true? Are they traveling across that large expanse
of water to get to where they need to go, or do they hug
the shoreline? Have any studies been done on that? Well, you know,
actually the best information we have on that is from just everyday folks that
are contributing their sightings to the e Bird database. E Bird is a project
of the cornellab of Ornithology and a number of other organizations cooling their resource to
create this database that ordinary citizens, scientists are or community scientists can contribute their
sightings to. And when you look at those at those sightings, the Cornell
has literally they've literally mapped the sidings on a date basis, and you can
actually watch an animation on their website showing how the birds migrate, and you
can see that, in fact, a long standing idea that they were migrating
both directions across the Gulf of Mexico, that's not so much true. Most
of those birds that are coming south in August September, they are coming around
the gulf, and there's a number of good reasons for them to do that,
including hurricanes and just the fact that the Tan Peninsula is kind of a
narrow target for them to hit as they come across, whereas when they're coming
north in the spring, they can hop from the Yucatan right across and hit
land wherever they go. But that's been more of the tremendous values of having
just you know, average birders out there in their backyards or out on trails
in the nearby park, or on vacation in places like southeastern Arizona reporting their
sightings to Eberts, so that we have all of that information that we can
map and learn more about the travels of birds, what habitats are important to
them at different times of year, and just better understand, and so we
have a better chance of making sure that they continue on to prosper in the
future. And I would imagine that a lot of that information that we are
finding out from things like eBird is creating both opportunity and problems for your new
edition of the Field Guide. Oh here, right about that? Holy motion,
Oh man. That that's something that I spend an awful lot of time
looking at the photos that are submitted to Eberts. Of course, not not
every every fighting that's submitted to Ebert has to be accompanied by a photo,
but where folks have submitted photos to Ebert, it's very very good information for
me because I can go in, For example, any bird that's difficult to
identify, I can go in and if a picture's been submitted, I can
look at that picture. Sometimes I even I can't tell, but sometimes I
can see that it's not what they thought it was, and I can contact
the folks who manage that database and they can reassign that bird to a different
species. Give the bad news to the person who reported that. Actually sometimes
it's good news. Actually in California, they had little birds that they thought
was a coast of something birds visiting a cemetery in a park near the coast,
and it turned out that little bird was a ruby throted and they got
very excited about it, because any ruby throated in California is definitely cause for
celebration. Sure, wow, Sherry, can I visit Ash Canyon Bird Sanctuary?
Just take a moment to describe it lovely, We would love to have
you visit sometimes. Ash Canyon Bird Sanctuary was the dream and the home of
our late friends married Joe Ballatore. Mary Joe was a passionate gardener. She
and her ex husband had landscaping business together. She was, like me,
an enthusiast of Salvians. She and I bonded over our mutual love of Salvians,
but we also a loted over our mutual love of birds as well.
In two thousand and two, she opened her yards to the public. This
is a long standing tradition here in Arizona. It's unusual for people to open
their yard to burgers to come and just sit in their yard and watch their
birds, but a few very generous individuals have done so, including Mary Joe,
and she unfortunately, she cared for her garden and posted thousands and thousands
of Burger from two thousand and two until the spring of twenty nineteen when she
passed away very sob and of course we were all devastated, but unfortunately her
friends rallied in one of her dearest friends, Tony Batiste, who runs a
little bed and breakfast nearby and another canyon nearby. He was determined not to
allow her property to just be sold off and the welcome matt taken in and
the theaters taken down, but to preserve it, to keep her dream alive.
And thanks to Tony and his connections, we were able to get a
substantial donation from the Molina family in California that allowed us to purchase her property,
her six point one nine acres of Kenyon Habitat and her home and her
gardens and keep it open to the public, to the birding public. And
since that time we've had so much support from the birding community and other nature
lovers, providing us with donations that have helped us to add things that Mary
Joe would love to have had during her tenures there. We have added rainwater
harvesting. We as much as possible in this very dry climate. We irrigate
the gardens with rainwater through a drift system. We added a pond which is
now home to four different endangered species, one plant and three animals too fish
in a front. We have expanded the feeding operation. We have replaced a
lot of the flowers of the plants that had died in Mary Joe's garden during
the time between her passing and the time we were able to take over ownership
and management. That was quite a job in itself, just removing a lot
of invasic plants that had taken over the garden, and then you know,
I'm doing triage the plants that hadn't survived, getting them out of the ground,
getting new plants in the ground, managing to go for population has been
quite a seat. Joe's took a very live and let live attitude towards the
wildlife in her garden, and while she did obviously take steps to manage the
damage that the wildlife did to her plants, her beautiful plants, she was
not the kind of person that would put out poisons and lethal traps and things
like that. So we have been taking that same philosophy to heart and using
repellents and sensing wire baskets keep the overs to meet the reef systems things like
that. So it's been quite an adventure restoring her gardens, but we get
thousands of visitors every year from all over the world enjoying that same hospitality that
Mary Joe establishes as her tradition, carrying on her legacy and just trying to
expand her vision, trying to invite more pollinators of cordiverse species to visit the
property. Planning more native plants very very important for supporting our native pollinators,
including the say, you know, butterflies and other insects. It's very important
to have their large food plants. So we're expanding within within Mary Joe's vision.
We're keeping her beautiful salvia garden and even adding new varieties to her salvia
gardens, but also adding in more flowering plants and more different species to attract
more different kinds of pollinators to the gardens. You know, Sherry, listening
to you talk from you know, the beginning of our conversation, it really
is amazing how much of a difference individuals can make. And you know,
whether it's the citizen science aspect or you know, all of these volunteers coming
together to keep this you know, beautiful Sanctuary. It really is what you
said that hummingbirds are the gateway, the gateway drug to conservation and you know,
really to a better world. And it's I think that your story has
has really made that vivid and clear for our listeners. I couldn't agree more
with this stacy. And you know, the one of the things that that
we do try to emphasize passively and actively with our work at Ashton and Bird
Sanctuary is that pretty much anybody anywhere, with any outdoor space, even if
it's an apartment balcony, you can contribute to wildlife conservation just by planting a
few plants, put a few pots on your on your patio or your balcony.
If you have space to garden. Even if you're a more traditional gardener
who's gardening the more traditional vegetables or ornamentals that you know most of us expect
to find in an average garden, you can tuck a few hummingbird friendly plants
in there. You can tuck you in a few food plants for the butterflies,
for both nectar and the larva. Anybody can help you. There's a
there's a new concept out there. I forget what they're calling it. But
basically it's it's like having a national park all over the country that consists of
little pocket habitats, mean little backyard. Every little patio can have something that's
beneficial to wildlife, and each of us can ensure that at least some wild
species in process. There's not much that you and I can do to help
blue whales or elephants, or mountain gorillas or tigers, but we can help
those wild species that visit our neighborhoods in our backyard. Steph won, of
course, is to be an organic gardener, to be very very judicious about
the kind of pest control you use. Don't use drug spectrum pesticides, US
targeted focused remedies for things like aphids and caterpillars and grubs and things like that.
There are all kinds of things that you can use that are not deadly
to other species, that are just going to take care of your one problem.
Or use barriers as much as you can, like our Cophra pacis and
talents. I'm working on a proprietary gopher repellent uh uh uh is that which
is brew of all kinds of aromatic caienne, pepper, castor oil like but
that's important. Thing is working without us having to kill any gophers, That's
what's important. Uh. And just make sure that that you are are planning
to write things in the right ways to help bring in the beneficial wildlife while
minimizing your conflicts with wildlife. Salvias are one of those great plants for that,
because those aromatic compounds that make salvia such wonderful plants, and culinarily,
you know, our culinary stage is as salvia. Uh, those kinds of
those kinds of of natural chemical defenses are actually pretty good for deterring things like
deer and squirrels. So keeping those things in mind and doing companion plantings of
some of those kind of spooky plants tritters don't like to eat, fear more
desirable plans that they do like to eat. That can be a great way
to diversify your garden, make it more valuable to wildlife. And then am
I as your conflicts with wildlife as well. Well. We love it and
we are going to put links to Ash Canyon and all of your other projects
on our website. Guardening Simplified on Air, so if anybody does happen to
be heading to southeastern Arizona, they can come and see the good work that
you are doing there. We want to thank you so very much for joining
us today. You shared so much great information and I know I'm really inspired.
I can't wait to get home and u and watch for having me wonderful
to hear. I hope all your readers are inspired because together we can make
it different. Thank you both so much for having me on. It's been
a delight. Thanks Sherry, Thank you, Sherry, A pleasure. Well,
you know what, that's what gardening simplified is all about doing things that
are good for you and good for wildlife and doing it simply so that was
inspirational. It definitely was. So thank you to Sherry, Thank you Rick,
and of course thanks to Adriana, and thank you so much to all
of you for listening. Hope you're inspired to do something in your garden.
It's a little bit better for wildlife.