I noticed the one in S. Maryland and am hoping it passes by this way!

My plum tree started its first little bloom yesterday with the few flower buds that it has. This is only the 2nd year that I've had it, so I was happy to see what the little blooms look like!

My blueberry flower buds are swelling nicely and hopefully that will be blooming in a week or two hopefully. Blueberries are supposedly used by hummers if they run across them. Also have a dicentra that has formed some stems with flower buds so that should be blooming soon too.

I bought some snapdragons and red petunias (was suprised that petunias were for sale this early around here) and some dianthus just to have something out there. Also have a small ball feeder up. When I see on the map that they have passed by here headed north, I may put the bigger feeder out.

I didn't get my little returning lady until around June last year but I hope her baby boys come a little earlier!

Happy Spring Everyone!!!!

Last week here in Connecticut the weather was absolutely beautiful so I hung my feeder outside!!!! I didn't see a hummingbird until the first week of May last year but I always hang my feeder outside at the end of March....just in case of course! I'm so excited I can't wait!!!!! It's so nice to have this site and be able to share with everyone else! Happy hummingbird watching and I hope you all have a blessed day!

Marcy aka catnappurr

I hung some feeders out last weekend and this weekend went to lowes, home depot and walmart and got red flowers (not much couice yet) and put out as many as possible until my sprouts are big enough. I'm so ready!!! At least they are here in MD somewhere!!! Now if they just find my house for a bit, I'll shoo some up to y'all further up!!!

glo

I went to Home Depot, Lowes, Wal Mart and two local nurseries yesterday. Pretty slim pickins' around here so far except for boxed roses bulbs and a few very hardy perennials. I was go to get a couple of cardinal flowers since I think I lost mine this winter and my seeds haven't sprouted yet but decided to wait a while longer. Everything else that was available i already have. I do have two good sized fuchsias in bloom that I put out when it is at least 50 degrees to get them ready to put out for the season and a dozen fuchsia cuttings that are rooted and growing but that is it so far. My native columbine and bleeding hearts should be ready to bloom about the time they arrive here.

Penny

Thanks for posting the map. I saw my first male this morning at the feeder. Yeah!!!! I knew some had been sighted previously in our North Alabama area, so I put up the feeders about a week ago. I think I was buzzed by one Sunday while working in the yard, and I know they have been drinking, but this was the first visual for me. I hope it won't be long till our neighbors to the north start seeing our friends again.

There is one report already in Cape May NJ
I am adding my second feeder this morning

Penny

Well I guess I'm excited because I put out my feeders this morning! I know it's still too early, but I'm going to be ready just in case. I had at least four regulars last summer, so I'm hoping they'll be back this way.

A couple of weeks ago I had the most incredible dream about hummingbirds flying around my head and landing on my shoulder. Can you tell I'm ready?

catnappurr

I'm in CT too. Last summer I had the remarkable good fortune to have a nesting pair of hummies and their offspring. If you recall, last spring was cool and wetÂby chance I happened to put my feeder out early. Apparently many folks who were late putting their feeders out had fewer or no hummies last year  and I heard from a birder in MA who said that they didnÂt have very many hummies at all but that ME was loaded! So it seems that if they donÂt find "food" they keep going north!

This year I am bound and determined to increase my population. My feeders are already out  and I am ready! How many hummies do you usually get?

Hoping everyone has good luck this year! I am worried that the hurricanes last year may have done the southward bound birds some harm.

That's an interesting theory, catnappurr, about putting the feeders out early. I have mine out right now, in the exact same spot it was last summer. It was last August that I first started noticing hummingbirds at my mom's house. Our yellow-orange trumpet vine (flava, I think) that frames the dining room window started blooming after years of only putting out vines and leaves. We don't get as much sun as it would probably like, but it still put out quite a few flowers which the hummers were drawn to. My mom and I were enchanted and got lots of nice views of them flitting about just inches from our dining room window. Inspired, I made a little whisky bottle feeder and they liked that even better than the trumpet vine! Don't worry, the whiskey was long gone!

As far as I could tell, we had 4 hummingbirds. We may have had more, but that was the most I ever saw at one time. At least two appeared to be young males, with little dark spots on their throats. I'm hoping they will return, but am also worried about their survival chances, given the high mortality from migration, plus Katrina on top of it. My other fear is that they may not associate my mom's house with springtime food, so may not show up until the summer when the trumpet vine blooms. I don't know if they're that smart, but I think they do have pretty impressive memories about when and where to find food.

This year, I've added some flowers that provide earlier bloom--Aquilegia canadensis, and also some Bee Balm that should hopefully start in June, well before the late-blooming Trumpet vines. I also have some Cardinal Climbers sprouting in peat pots that I plan to put in a pot at the sunny southwest corner of my mother's home. I'm also on the lookout for Impatiens at the Home Depot (or wherever) and hope to put those out as soon as they become available.

I am waiting anxiously, hoping that I will soon see the little guys! It is my hope, also, that I can increase their population, and have a better chance for early returnees. I'd like to see hummers from mid April through mid September and plan to keep doing whatever it takes to improve my chances.

Kristin - you might be pleasantly surprised! I saw my first in mid-August of 2004 and she was nectaring from a few weigela reblooms and leftover honeysuckle blooms. I didn't have a feeder then, but managed to eventually find a little ball feeder that I strapped to my balcony rail, but by then, I think she had left for her winter home.

In 2005, I was ready for them, Perky Pet feeder and all, which I finally found sometime in May, and she reappeared sometime in June while the weigela was in full bloom. It took her a little while to figure out how to use the feeder and perch there, but once she did, she was coming all day long, about every 20 - 30 minutes. Later in the summer, she disappeared for a couple weeks, only coming maybe once or twice a day. But when she returned more regularly, she apparently showed who I think were her 2 baby boys, where to get some yums yums.

This year, the feeders are out right now! Hoping that she and the boys survived the journey and will come a little earlier.