Hummingbird coming in for nectar as I put this post together.

It has been a crazy ruby-throated hummingbird summer for me. And I’m grateful. Even as I type this on a Thursday evening in August on my deck, a ruby-throated hummingbird is hovering close to my nectar feeder while trying to decide if I’m a threat.

Ruby-throated hummingbird nest digiscoped with my phone and spotting scope.

I was walking around Westwood Hills at the end of July and watched a hummingbird gleaning insects around a water feature. I watched her fly up to a thin branch right over the trail to what looked like a small notch on the tree. I got her in my binoculars, and sure enough she was on a nest. I uploaded a video on Instagram that gives a better perspective of where the nest was.

Two weeks later I came back and sure enough there were two chicks sticking their little heads out.

Baby hummingbirds! If you want to see some baby hummingbird tongue, check out the video on Instagram.

When I knew I was moving back to Minnesota, I checked an apartment complex that was on my old birding patch. I used to pass this place all the time while birding and thought the grounds right on a wetland with a water feature and Joe-Pye-weed looked ideal. When I mentioned it to my husband at the time, he didn’t like the zip code, “That’s St. Louis Park, I have to have a Minneapolis zip code.” We all have our quirks.

But when I was cruising the website while in Alaska looking for a new place to live, I noticed that they named all of their floor plans after birds. Welp. I guess this is fate? When I did the actual in-person inspection, the woman showing me around said, “I’m going to start by showing you the Starling.”

I said jokingly, “I’m not sure I can live in an invasive species.”

“Then I’ll show your the Loon,” she said.

How could I not fall in love with this place? I live in the Morning Dove floor plan—which cracks me up because it’s one of the larger units and the Osprey is a one bedroom. And if you’ve ever seen a mourning dove nest…it’s in no way shape or form a two bedroom.

But I also noticed on the tour that a lot of people had bird feeders—especially hummingbird feeders. Having worked in a bird store, I know how many people do not keep fresh nectar in their feeders and they kind of become a decroative thing that hummingbirds visit for a second and move one.

After I moved in, I put up a seed feeder and didn’t bother with nectar. In Minnesota, hummingbirds pass through the Twin Cities metro area in May and nest out of urban areas and show up like mad in August. May 2 I was on my deck. A female hummingbird flew to my deck, she hovered around the seed feeder, then hovered in front of my face, and then flew away.

“Oh hell,” I thought, “did my previous neighbor have a feeder and was she back from migration expecting the same from me?” The next day on my deck…the same thing happenedd. I’m not a fan of hummingbird feeders because you have to really keep them clean to get the hummers, I prefer flowers, but I also wasn’t in the right state of mind to maintain a proper hummingbird container garden.

But a bought a pair of hummingbird feeders so I could set up an easy rotation system of putting out a feeder and having a clean one at the ready to quickly refill and put out when the current one had the nectar go bad…about two and a half days based on sun angles.

Hummingbird perched on a branch just off of my deck.

She checked it out and sipped demurely.

Then one day with my home office window open I heard a familiar clicking sound. I went to my deck and instantly found the male ruby-throated hummingbird doing his "U” shaped dive back and forth in the tree in front of me. Wow, displaying and nesting right off my deck. I guess it pays birding-wise to have a zip code just outside of Minneapolis.

Now she and her offspring visit my feeder and periodically engage in some fun aerial jousting and I will keep my hummingbird feeder rotation going until the ruby-throats move on sometime in October.

In many ways I feel like I’ve had a “basic bitch” birding summer. I haven’t chased rarities, but just delighted in the common Minnesota birds I missed so much while I was in Alaska. And I’m grateful for the hot hummingbird action I’ve had at home and at Westwood.

I really missed fall migration while living in Alaska. Yes Alaska has fall migration, but it was all too brief. In Minnesota migration lasts months with shorebirds popping up as early as late July. But really it starts in August and depending on when lakes and rivers freeze it can least into early December.

While birding at Westwood Hills this week with my friend Kara, we watched dozens of common nighthawks fly over at about 5 pm, feeding and beginning the journey south. Yesterday, while working, I noticed a warbler flitting in the tree and got my binoculars on it. It was a young, hatched this summer Tennessee Warbler.

The view from the Rock Creek Trail inside Denali National Park and Preserve. I could walk out my front door and hike this regularly.

I knew I was in trouble in Alaska my first fall. The park starts to shut down mid September and if you live there, you practically have it to yourself. I decided I was going to hike a trail out my front door called the Rock Trail daily until the weather stopped me. I have seen many autumns, but none as spectacular as in Central Alaska. And after a few days of this plan, I realized I was bored on the hike and I couldn’t figure out why. What was wrong with me that I thought that view above was boring? And then I realized what was happening, I wasn’t hearing anything. No birds, no crickets, no katydids, nothing. Dead silence , and then I realized all the birds had left. There were a few cranes and swans flying over still. But the waves of warblers, waterfowl, sparrows, that I’d come to expect over many months in Minnesota they had all left already. Of course, I knew from reading books and articles that breeding seasons were fast and furious in the Arctic. I was living in the Sub Arctic…less than 330 miles south of the Arctic Circle. I realized that it was going to be months of silence…It was late September, I wouldn’t really hear birds again until late April…over six months away.

That’s not to say there were no birds. Boreal chickadees, magpies, and Canada jays were around. The first winter didn’t have much of a tree crop so I didn’t really see any crossbills or redpolls. I wasn’t allowed to have a bird feeder where I lived because park rules and grizzly bears so I could easily go days without seeing a bird.

On Saturdays in winter, I’d drive the sixteen miles to Healy to visit the grocery/hardware store/gun store/convenience store/liquor store known as Three Bears to watch the parking lot ravens as a form of desperation birding. Often, I’d buy a bag of walnuts to toss out to them.

My first Christmas Bird Count only had three species. The second one had more thanks to it being an irruptive year for finches and grosbeaks. Side note: the upside to a CBC in Alaska is that there is so little daylight, you count starts around 10 am and only lasts about four hours.

So looking at the calendar and realizing fall migration is on, I’m going to take it all in and enjoy it for as long as possible. Warblers are already moving through in Minnesota, and it won’t be long until we see even more nighthawks overhead, and wood thrushes (like on above) will be passing through our yards. We still three more months ahead at least and I intend to savor it.