Grumpy's Guide to Hummingbirds

How to attract these aerial acrobats to your garden-and then enjoy the show

- STEVE BENDER

LITTLE WINSTON is back. He sits on a feeder hanging from the crepe myrtle in my front yard. He is a hummingbird, and that is fortunate. For if he were a squirrel, his life would be in grave danger. Winston is a ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris), to be exact, the most widespread species of its kind in North America and often the only one folks in the eastern half of the U.S. and Canada ever encounter. That is because it's the lone type that breeds in these parts during warm months before migrating an astonishing distance to Central America to spend the winter grooving to merengue and salsa music. I can tell that Winston is a male thanks to the iridescent red cravat he wears on his tiny throat. Females sport white ones. Other than that, the sexes are practically identical: Both are around 3 inches long, weigh about 1/10 to 2/10 ounce, and have metallic green feathers. Beating their wings some 50 times per second, they mesmerize us with gymnastic feats, flying up, down, forward, sideways, or backward then hovering or darting off at more than 30 mph. Thus, whenever I watch news reports covering F-16 fighter jets locking radars on UFO's doing incredible things, I suspect the pilots are merely chasing these amazing creatures. They'll ask, excitedly, "Are you guys down there seeing this?" How embarrassing.

MAKE YOUR GARDEN A HUMMINGBIRD MAGNET