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Hummingbirds make good art subjects, as evidenced by this painting by Sandy Parrill. Courtesy | Sandy Parrill

Hummingbirds make good art subjects, as evidenced by this painting by Sandy Parrill. Courtesy | Sandy Parrill

Sunbeams sparked off the throat of a ruby-throated hummingbird, transforming it to a flying jewel as it hovered inches in front of my face, black eyes inspecting me carefully. It was perhaps looking for a tasty handout or wondering if there might be a bug or two in the tangle of my hair it could have for lunch (God forbid) before zipping off to a nearby geranium flower for better pickings.

It carried sunlight with it, reflecting off tiny bubbles lining the shafts of its feathers into iridescent greens and golds as its wings flicked in and out of the afternoon light with the audible thrum that gives the bird its name.

Fall hummingbird migration has begun, though from late July on, males have mostly already departed. Remaining females and adolescent offspring like my visitor are whizzing from begonias to geraniums and back again, with stops for nectar at black and blue salvias and periwinkles.

I’ve watched them in my brugmansias gleaning an insect harvest, picking off tiny spiders, beetles, aphids and gnats and keeping up mosquito control. Fattening up for the long journey ahead, they will gain an extra gram or two to sustain enough energy for the long flight to their Central American winter homes.

Among the smallest birds, weighing in at only about 2 1/2 grams with a length of less than 4 inches, the hummingbird family includes more than 330 species found only in the Americas, mostly in Central and South America near the equator. Only a dozen or so species migrate north into the U.S. and Canada, with a few remaining year-round in western and southern states.

Probably the most beloved migrating birds of North America, hummingbirds arrive in the Ozarks from about April 1 through the end of the month, always showing up here when our native columbines begin to bloom.

Males are first to arrive, establishing territory and squabbling with other males, tiny fighters harassing hawks, crows and any other birds they may perceive as adversaries with their long, rapier-sharp beaks. For their size, they are mighty adversaries unrelentingly fierce in claiming what they think should be theirs.

Females arrive a week or so later and begin nest building, usually high above ground in elms or hackberries 40 feet up or more, but occasionally on fences, chains, wires or low-hanging branches where we might be lucky enough to find one.

Made of soft plant material, lichens, moss and small twigs woven together with spiderwebs, quarter-size nests are stomped down, pressed into shape with the female’s body and lined with her breast feathers. Elasticity of the spiderwebs allows for expansion as the babies grow.

With her nest ready, the female begins looking for a hot male, and they are all glad to oblige, performing aerial dances, hoping to make enough of an impression to be the lucky guy. Once chosen, she leads him to her boudoir to mate (taking about 5 seconds) and then kicks him out (or he leaves after the one-time booty call).

Once on her own, she lays three to five white eggs the size of a coffee bean and incubates them for two weeks. As a single mom, for about three weeks more, she raises her nestlings on a slurry of nectar and small insects, often robbing spiderwebs of prey (before catching and eating the small spiders, too). Fledglings perch on the edges of their nest and hilariously practice wing-flapping until ready to launch an often wobbly first flight.

The male does not participate in fatherhood; rather, he’s a player who mates with every other female he can impress before his July flight home to the tropics. Females follow in mid-September, leaving grown youngsters to tag behind alone without parental guidance.

• Hummingbirds have long, W-shaped, hairy tongues to rapidly flick up nectar at 18 times a second.

• They don’t walk like other birds; feet are only for perching, scratching an itch, bathing or stomping that nest material.

• They see in ultraviolet, have a sense of smell and softly chirp, but do not sing.

• Their wings can move in a figure eight — allowing hovering, sideways, vertical and reverse flight — and flap 15-80 times a second.

• A Pueblo legend details the hummingbird bringing smoke to shamans after getting it from the caterpillar guardian of tobacco plants.

Hummers may live three to nine years, remembering every flower and feeder ever visited. Presumably, they also recognize anyone who has ever fed them, returning to the same backyard each year, often on the same date, encoding geometry for navigation and tracking time — all with a brain the size of a grain of rice.

A migrating ruby-throated hummingbird can make the 500-mile flight across the Gulf of Mexico to the Yucatan in 18-24 hours, sometimes riding high (spotted by balloonists up to 500 feet) and catching tailwinds to conserve energy. In bad weather, exhausted hummingbirds are known to take refuge on oil rigs at night to rest before resuming morning flight. Getting to the coast first is a bit slower at 23 miles a day, flying low to source nectar for refueling along the way.

Hummingbirds fly solo, rather than in flocks — even youngsters on their first migration — as their ancestors have done for thousands of years. It baffles scientists, who probably understand more about quarks and black holes than the inner workings of a hummingbird brain. It may be inherited memory built into their DNA, an ability to cue in on Earth’s magnetic poles or tracking the sun with their brain’s pineal gland.

In addition to traditional banding and human sighting reports, new technology allows researchers to track the tiny birds with subcutaneously implanted “passive integrated transponder” tags, read by receivers at specialized feeding stations.

It is a myth that leaving feeders up until late fall will prevent birds from migrating. While they prefer natural flower sources for nectar, hummingbird feeders provide an auxiliary, ready food source for young stragglers. Feeders should stay up a couple of weeks after the last hummingbird has been seen, often in late October.

We stopped putting out feeders after repeated raccoon raids, letting hummers rely on natural food sources, but with new, raccoon-proof feeder poles, I’ll fill them this fall to help compensate for drought-reduced flower supplies.

Another legend tells of asking hummingbirds to appeal to the gods for rain. I’ll definitely put in a request before they leave.

Sandy and Jim Parrill garden at Chaos, their acre of the Ozarks in Joplin. Sandy is a lifelong gardener and a Missouri master gardener. Jim is a former garden center owner and landscaper; both are past members of the Missouri Landscape and Nursery Association. Email them at sandraparrilll@sbcglobal.net and follow their Facebook page, A Parrillel Universe of Wonderful Things.

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