Well, easy for them for sure. It remains fascinating for us humans who have long wished through eons of history to be ‘free as a bird’ to go places at will. Long ago a few people tried using wax to attach feathers to their arms, then jumped off a cliff in attempts to fly.

Well, that did not turn out very well. Crash! But people were dreaming nonetheless of flying even if they did not understand at those times the sciences behind birds being able to fly.

For us in the eastern portion of the United States, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird is the only hummer we are likely to see. There are many species in the western mountains and desert southwest.

But for Midwestern folks, the Ruby-throat is the only breeding hummingbird we may encounter. They are brilliant, especially if the male chooses to flare his throat patch to catch sunlight in just the right way.

He becomes a jewel in the sun, a glitter of superb beauty in a tiny package of feathers covering his wondrous frame of super light weight skeleton and muscles. The ability of hummingbirds to flick about in acrobatic precision flight, stop and go, hover in place and then zip off to parts unknown in a split second is all too common. Its tiny wings can beat at 53 times per second, a feat no bald eagle could ever hope to achieve.

People set out hummingbird feeders, or plant tube-like flowering plants to help attract hummingbirds. Sugar water mixed one-quarter cup of sugar to one-quarter cup of water is a formula that works.

Food coloring is not needed, desired and is unnecessary. Just change the water mixture often so it does not get cloudy as sugar water will ferment rapidly in hot weather to produce toxic alcohol.

Flowering plants with tube-like flowers of orange or red color is a better long term choice. Hummers have excellent vision. What they see includes colors within the ultraviolet spectrum, something we humans cannot see.

So how a flower appears to us is not how it appears to the eyes and brain of a hummingbird. Natural sweet nectar within flowers serves as food. Flowers of trumpet creeper, honeysuckle, jewelweed, bee-balm, red buckeye and red morning glory will serve well.

Insects are also on the menu which they may catch in mid air or pluck out of a spider web, denying the spider its meal. They can catch mosquitoes, gnats, fruit flies and small bees mid air. Obviously these food sizes fit the bird.

A hummingbird nest is about the size of a golf ball, attached to a sturdy branch and laced with spider silk threads, tiny plant materials, lichens and a few other ingredients. Into the cup of this nest will be laid two to three eggs, each egg being about one-half inch long and one-third of an inch wide.

Incubation takes 12 to 14 days. Young fledge in 18 to 22 days time.

Did you know that hummingbirds’ short legs prevent them from walking or hopping? They may shuffle along a perch to get a better position.

From an acrobatic standpoint, this little bird can scratch its head and neck by raising a foot above its head, and use its beak to tweak feathers. I have been successful in past photo sessions to capture images of these little birds doing just that, with its body all contorted into weird shapes.

When it comes to Bald Eagles, this huge bird with a wingspan of six to eight feet is impressive. Those powerful wings gather and push off because the amount of air under them is huge, compared to the hummingbird.

With slow yet precise beats an eagle easily gains airspeed and lift to propel itself from point to point, and its eagle eye is well designed (four to eight times more acute than a human eye) to pick up the smallest of details far below on the ground where a mouse, a rabbit, an injured bird, a snake or a fish just under the surface of a lake or river is vulnerable.

Then the eagle uses its very strong talons and leg muscles to clamp onto its prey. A sharp beak is quick to make a killing cut before the critter is eaten or returned to a nest for young eaglets to munch upon.

There are about a dozen active bald eagle nests in Marshall County and over 200 in the state of Iowa according to eagle census data. People worldwide continue to monitor the Decorah eagle camera whereby we all can watch the details of egg laying, hatching and rearing of eaglets to adult size, and then watch as they use their wings for the first time to break free from the nest to go flying on their own.

Remote tree mounted video cameras are a wonderful tool to have at our disposal to observe eagle life full circle. Natural history lessons are available just by the click of a few computer keys.

A hummingbird golf ball sized nest is an entirely different thing than an eagle nest. Eagle nests begin with branches and large sticks laid into large forked branches of a tall tree.

In Iowa, that could be a cottonwood, oak or other mature trees found along river and stream courses. The nest will end up being about five to six feet in diameter and over three feet tall, and it may be used year after year, just added to each year to make it bulkier and of course heavier. A big nest has been calculated to have over 1,000 pounds of materials in it after many seasons of use. Hopefully the tree branches are strong enough to support that monster nest.

Now biologists have technology available to attach mini-cameras and/or global positioning data sent to ground based sensing equipment. The data allows scientists to map out where an eagle goes after it leaves the nest both in distance and territorial exploits.

Those distances can be well over 1,000 miles. And it is neat to also note how after a long journey to new habitats, that same eagle may return to “home base” as if it had just been out for a leisurely flight.

In the bird world, tiny or large, the contrasts between species is an obvious difference. Yet these feathered animals are well suited to fill the ecological niches that each is designed to fill. Mother Nature did her job well. Us humans who thrive on the detective work of biological information, and look for answers to the questions of how, why and where birds do what they do and when they do it, will have a never ending test to our knowledge base. It is fun and exciting to learn all we can about native wildlife.

——-

Birds of all sizes see the big picture from their lofty airborne flight levels. They let their spirits soar. They cherish freedom, and they keep their eyes set on the goal.

——-

Garry Brandenburg is the retired director of the Marshall County Conservation Board. He is a graduate of Iowa State University with a BS degree in Fish & Wildlife Biology.

Contact him at:

P.O. Box 96

Albion, IA 50005