We saw our first hummingbird of the year today.
The male scouts are here, looking for likely sites to nest and for feeding spots. Our feeders have been out for several weeks now, but the hummers are pretty consistently here around the date of last frost, April 15.
It will be interesting to watch this date change as the climate shifts:
2003: April 21
2004: April 19
2005: April 19
2006: no record
2007: no record
2008: April 17
Not a statistically significant trend, but it bears watching.
The harder part is tracking the last bird to leave, in autumn. You have to track every day you do see one, and then as it gets more and more sparse, you eventually give up hope and look up the last day you had a check mark on the calendar. Kind of depressing, compared to the excitement of the first visitor.
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