Educate Yourself About the Rofous Hummingbird and Other Hummingbirds
Rofous Hummingbird
The Rofous Hummingbird has a flaming orange-red throat, bright-red back (the only North American hummingbird that has a red back), White breast, and outer tail feathers are usually broader than Allen’s Hummingbird. Its length is 3 ½ in (9cm) Its wingspan is 4 ½ in (11cm) Its voice is a call of high, hard “chip tyuk”. Their eggs are pure white with 1 clutch consisting of 2 eggs, The female incubates for around 12-14 days, and fledging time is about 20 days. The female feed the young. The female is mostly green with a whitish underside.
The Rofous Hummingbirds are very well traveled little dynamos, with record setting miles under their belt every year. The fall migration from their nesting habitat in Southern Alaska to Central America measures a whopping 3.000 miles (4,800m), and although they weigh less than a quarter, they can easily fly over 500 miles (800km), without a pit stop.
They also have larger hearts than other hummers, and with their special muscle and blood characteristics they are able to beat their wings 45 times per second. Very impressive!!!
When the time comes to refuel, they will look for a rich feeding area, and feed for about two weeks, and then continue their next face of the migration. During these pit stops they can gain as much as 50% of their total body weight.
The trick to stay energetic for the hummers is to conserve energy witch they do trough reducing their body temperature, and by roosting at lower elevations at night. During the day they will fly up to higher elevations again, where they can find large areas of food supply.
During their migration they will follow the migration of sapsuckers, and also time their route with the flowering of certain plants. To follow the sapsuckers is important to the hummers as well, since the holes drilled by them will provide a source of sweet sap in early spring when flowers in Alaska have not start to bloom yet.
When the nesting season begins around March, the male hummingbirds will stake out a territory over a nectar producing bush, and turn into flying acrobats. Watch them swing like pendulums, or twist in arcs, most anything to impress the female. Once the mating hummingbirds have found one another, and are ready for their mating ritual, as they join together, spinning in tight little circles just above the ground.
The female will build a nest on a forked branch about 5-2-ft (1.5-6m) above the ground.The nest witch measures less than an inch across, and has room for two white eggs, the size of small beans. She uses light-weight materials like plant down, and spider webs, and decorate it with lichens on the outside, then fasten it to a small tree branch using its saliva. The female will build the nest, feed and raise the young with no help from the male. When returning from migration the following year, she will often go back to the same nesting site.
To attract Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and other hummers to your lovely bird feeding garden, plant terraced native plantings for hummingbirds, as well as trees, shrubs, vines, and plants that produces tube-shaped flowers in red, orange, and yellow.Put out the most colorful nectar feeders you can find on the market, red ones has been shown to attract the best. Once you have established hummingbirds in your garden, you can change the feeders into more subdued colors.
Fill your nectar feeders with a sugar solution using these measurements:
Use 1 part sugar, to 4 parts water, and you can use regular granulated sugar, witch will melt quickly in boiling water, or super fine sugar witch melts in cold water. Make sure the water is cold before you fill the feeders, and do not put any kind of food coloring into the solution, as this can harm the feeding birds. To learn more about hummingbird gardens and feeders go to our section on HUMMINGBIRD GARDENS.
