Penny

Getting ever close to you penny and especially to Kristin.

As a Pennsylvanian, my heart skipped a beat when I saw that subject of posting. I knew, though, that it would probably be the eastern part of the state and I was right. They always get theirs a few days before we do.

The map is at an interesting point right now. I noticed that the same thing happened last year, and probably in previous years. I've written about this before, but just thought I'd mention it again because the map right now illustrates it so well, and this pattern will be harder to see later when the map gets filled in. What it seems to be showing me are two major migration routes. One goes up the Mississippi valley, and the other up the east coast, and nothing up the center where the Appalachians lie. This means that all of us just west of the mountains have to wait forever and a day to get our birds, which I think are moving eastward and continuing up the Ohio valley. Others continue north up the Mississippi valley and reach points north of us days before they get here.

I wish they had a way to put transmitters on these little guys and see where they go. I wonder if "my" possibly more central migrating birds fly over Mexico and Texas, and not over the gulf waters. Some experts have suggested that not all the Ruby-throats fly over water, and that some just move northward over land in Central America, Mexico, and Texas. I'm thinking maybe it's the eastern ones that make that daring, non-stop flight over water. Just curious, but I don't know if anyone's ever going to figure it out without teeny tiny radio transmitters. I wonder if technology is moving in that direction, or if transmitters will always be too big for those little guys.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hummingbird migration map

This made me laugh. I now check the migration map every day and this is my first year with a feeder.

I'm in the Oxford area of SW Chester County--near that sighting. I will fill the feeder and put it out on Sunday.

When I saw the dot in PA I wondered if the little bird was hanging around all the beautiful stuff at Longwood gardens!!! That place must be a hummingbirds dream!!! Well my feeder is up plus I got a little hanging basket of what looks like some kind of red snapdragon and petunia to lure them in!

Yes wouldn't it be neat if we could put a GPS transmitter on one of those little guys to see where they go!!! We had speakers at our garden club this year who attached those transmitters to turtles and a speaker came all the way from Africa who attaches them to wild elephants!!! Now that's a job I wouldn't want to have. I don't remember actually seeing the size of the transmitter though when the turtle guy was speaking. Maybe someday they will be able to do it though. It sure would give a lot of wonderful information. Speaking of GPS I was just out in my new car trying to learn how to talk to the SAT NAV!!! Wow technology is fun but learning how to do all this stuff is daunting to say the least!