Ruby throated Hummingbird Gorget

We put a new hummingbird feeder up at work and within a day there were two male hummers fighting over it. One of them came to a rest on the wooden railing outside our volunteer lounge and I was able to take these shots. I love how the ruby red gorget only appears when the angle is just right with respect to the sun.

Incidentally, where on Earth does a word like gorget come from? It turns out that a gorget is a collar made of a leather or steel that protects one's neck. They are common on suits of armor. The word itself is from the Old or Middle French "gorge" meaning simply "throat."



~Kirk

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Get Those Hummingbird Feeders Up!

I posted this morning about the Chimney Swift migration updates available online and figured I'd mention the fact that you can track the Ruby-throated Hummingbird migration online next week some time. I checked the website to see how the hummer migration is coming and to my surprise they are trucking north at a rapid clip. Check out the most recent map! There are none in Minnesota yet but one right across the river in Wisconsin. It looks to be almost directly across the river from the nature center! I'm guessing what we're seeing here is hummingbirds using the St. Croix River as a flyway. Time to get those feeders out.

~Kirk

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Migration Updates and Eastern Phoebe Webcam

The chimney swift migration pushes ever onward and upwards. Chimney Swifts have now been reported in Missouri and Illinois. You can track the migration at the Driftwood Wildlife Association Chimney Swift Migration website.

Another migration website to keep an eye on is the Ruby-throated hummingbird migration over at migration.net. I was pretty shocked to see that there are reports already of hummingbirds in Minnesota and up into Canada! Clearly though, the mass of birds is keeping to the south and east. Follow the migration here.

The 2009 Phoebe Cam is now officially up and running and the feed is available to the public. The Lee & Rose Warner Nature Center where Paul and I both work is a partner with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology on the Nest Camera project. Live images from our Eastern Phoebe nest are sent out around the world via the Cornell Nest Cam website.

Here is a live image from the nest. The blog automatically uploads the most recent image when you land here so to see the next image taken you'll have to refresh the browser window or go directly to our bird's page at Cornell. New photos are uploaded every 20 seconds on that page and you can leave comments in the forum about what you are seeing. You can also show the camera in self-refreshing Pop-up that you can leave on your desktop.



This is the same nest site used last year. A tornado came though last memorial day with 110 mph straight line winds and while the web feed went down because of a power failure, when it came back up in the morning all the birds on the nest were safe so this is a proven good location to build a nest. We keep the nest up each year and the birds re-use it. Enjoy!

~Kirk

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