Hummingbirds can distinguish many more colors than humans. Not just ultraviolet, but ultraviolet+green, ultraviolet+red, and ultraviolet+yellow. Researchers spent three summers deploying sugar of various hues to discover this. We are “color-blind compared to birds” according to one of the scientists. And, according to me, it’s good to clean out the hummingbird feeder before it gets moldy.

/in , /by
You might also like
The hot, hot weather in late May took a toll on apple blossoms. They seem to have opened up on one day and disappeared the next. Of course, my sense of time, and most everyone else’s, may be a bit off, due to isolation and discombobulation.
The leaves of sugar maple seedlings don’t look at all like maple leaves. They have no lobes or very small lobes at best. You can see the seed leaves, the cotyledons, below. Last year’s seedlings are very small but they have maple shaped leaves – and no cotyledons. Plenty of both this year.
Luckily, singing season for the veery lasts a long time. They’re still at it, mostly in the mornings and evenings.
It seems impolite to mention it, but it’s not inexpensive to keep our fleet of little birdfeeder birds fed.
Brooks that often dry up in late summer around here have dried up. It is getting closer to late summer than I like to acknowledge,and it has been abnormally droughty.
Some of us need to relearn the thrush songs anew every year: the sort of ee-o-lay of the wood thrush, followed by a buzz; the longish first note of the hermit thrush followed by a jumble; the downward slide (think V) of the veery.
The first thunderstorms of spring arrived on 60-70 m.p.h. winds. Tornado warnings were issued for Bennington, Rutland, Windsor, and Windham counties.
Most spring ephemerals have yellowed, withered, and disappeared. No more trout lilies, spring beauties, or toothworts till next spring.