John Shewey - The Hummingbird Handbook

THE
HUMMINGBIRD
HANDBOOK

Everything You Need to Know about These Fascinating Birds

JOHN SHEWEY
Birds & Blooms

In the end, we will conserve only what we love;
we love only what we understand, and
we will understand only what we are taught.

Baba Dioum, 1968

one
Hummingbird Trivia: Facts, Fictions & Folklore

two
Hummingbird Basics

three
Planting and Landscaping for Hummingbirds

four
Hummingbirds of the United States

five
Hummingbirds on the Road

six
Hummingbirds Abroad: A Gallery of Species

Like the whir of their teensy wings, hummingbirds create quite a buzz wherever they show up. Seeing one of these exuberant and energetic fliers dash through your garden, hover at a flower you planted or sip from your feeder for the 100th time is just as exciting as the first time. Youre not alone if your heart swells just a tiny bit when a hummingbird chooses to make a stop in your yardit happens to me, too.

If theres one thing Ive learned in my 10+ years with Birds & Blooms, its how much people love and adore hummingbirds. I see it in the high engagement on social media posts involving hummingbirds. I see it in the thousands of hummingbird photos submitted to our photo contests. I see it in the positive reactions to our annual hummingbird edition of the magazine. Our audience yearns for more photos and information about the tiny birds that spark joy and wonder with every wingbeat.

At Birds & Blooms, we tend to focus on hummingbirds in the backyard. But in this book, John Shewey offers up everything youve ever wanted to know about hummingbirds, so teaming up on this project made perfect sense. He captures the spirit and allure of these captivating birds in every fascinating fact, historical tidbit, amusing anecdote, species profile and plant pick. Its truly a handbooka complete guide to the lives, movements and habits of hummingbirds. Here, he gives you all of the tools you need to understand what makes them tick, how to attract them to your backyard with feeders or plants and all of the basics to create a bustling hummingbird habitat.

If youre like me and call the eastern half of the U.S. home, we only experience ruby-throated hummingbirds whizzing around our yards. Those living in the western U.S. have opportunities to see many more species. I especially appreciate Johns thorough reporting on how to locate hummingbirds if youre traveling within North America, Central America or South America. He includes detailed information about festivals dedicated to hummingbirds, hot spots of the western U.S. and how hummingbirds contribute to ecotourism outside of North America.

At any location known for hummingbird sightings, even if its your local park, youre sure to find fellow bird enthusiasts just like you. Because were a community, we hummingbird lovers, and John and I are glad youre here!

Kirsten Schrader
Executive Editor, Birds & Blooms

As I write this, on a late-summer day with the windows open, my yard is a cacophony of hummingbird squeals and chatters. The tiny birds are chasing one another nonstop, each trying to defend its food sources. I often wonder how they ever manage to find time to actually feed themselveson flower nectar, tiny bugs, and the sugar water in my feeders. How do they replenish their rapidly expended energy when they are so obsessed with chasing each other away? And then I realize I have lost track of time and whiled away 30 minutes just watching these beguiling little winged acrobats.

The approximately 340 extant hummingbird species are entirely and uniquely American, living from Alaska to southernmost South America. Superlatives spanning the dictionary are insufficient to describe them. These captivating birds mystified early explorers, baffled scientists, enraptured ornithologistsand they continue to do so, as researchers routinely make intriguing discoveries about hummingbirds. Unsurprisingly, hummingbirds enthralled indigenous peoples; many cultures throughout the Americas included these bejeweled creatures in their mythologies. And when European settlers arrived in the New World, they found hummingbirds so enigmatic that many people were frightened by them. Hummingbirds were unlike anything they had ever seen in the Old World.

These perplexing and enchanting creatures mesmerize us with their unparalleled combination of dazzling psychedelic colors and incredible speed, all packed into diminutive bodies. Life for a hummingbird is a blur to us; in fact, their exact modes of hovering and flying and feeding were only recently unraveled: it took advanced high-speed motion photography, and the subsequent slowing of hummingbirds on film, for their actions to be deciphered.

I regard hummingbirds as portals into the natural world. They are universally fascinating and appealingso much so that they are empowered to draw people into a deeper appreciation and understanding of ecology. They foster curiosity among observers, and with luck such curiosity will then transcend the messengerthe hummingbirdto engender a rich interest in natural sciences. My own interest in hummingbirds began in my childhood when my mother put out feeders, but my fascination with them commenced on 1 June 2012.

On that early-summer day, I was immersed in a five-day bird-photography expedition with Tim Blount for our book, Birds of the Pacific Northwest. Atop a sprawling fault-block mountain in remote southeastern Oregon, we stopped at an outpost of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, something of an oasis in the high desert thanks to trees planted there decades ago. They attract migrating songbirds, but we hardly expected the whir of hummingbird wings when we stepped out of the truck. Blooming shrubbery amid a vast sea of sagebrush had obviously attracted these hummingbirds, which were refueling during the peak of migration, when northern species travel many hundreds of miles between their wintering grounds in Mexico and their breeding territories.

Armed with cameras and binoculars, Tim and I assumed the handful of hummingbirds to be the common local speciesRufous or Black-chinned Hummingbirdsso we were astonished to discover that, instead, they were Broad-tailed Hummingbirds, very rare in Oregon. Two males were competing for the attentions of two females, and all four were buzzing about at warp speed, alternating between chasing one another and lapping nectar from the abundant blooms. We captured many fine images, and Tim eventually walked off into the surrounding steppe in hopes of photographing other birds. I stayed behind with the hummingbirds and Im glad I did, because when I walked around to the far side of the row of flowering shrubs, I discovered a fifth member of the tribebut this one was different. I soon identified it as a male Ruby-throated Hummingbird.