Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and Cardinal-flower – A Perfect Partnership!

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Mary Anne Borge

Ruby-throated Hummingbird drinking nectar from Cardinal-flower

From late July to early September, Cardinal-flower’s brilliant scarlet blossoms beckon to thirsty little Ruby-throated Hummingbirds like a neon sign to a hungry traveler, promising a long satisfying drink to this industrious bird. Hummingbirds can’t resist bright tubular flowers that are shaped to accommodate their long narrow bills and tongues, a design that allows them to access the bounty that is out of reach to less compatibly designed diners.

Each Cardinal-flower (Lobelia cardinalis) plant has a tall cluster of flowers that bloom around a central stem. In order to maximize the chances of successful pollination (and by happy coincidence, our viewing pleasure), Cardinal-flower stages the opening of its flowers over a period of weeks. Blooming begins with the lowest buds on the stem, gradually moving up until all the flowers in a cluster have opened for business. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds will likely be regular visitors throughout this process.

But the Cardinal-flower expects something in return from the Hummingbird for its gift of nectar. The unsuspecting little bird carries out an essential service for the Cardinal-flower: pollination.

When the Hummingbird inserts its bill in the center of the bright red corolla to drink, the top of its head is snugly brushed by a long tube that arches above the flower’s scarlet lobes, the flower and the Hummingbird fitting so perfectly together that it looks like a custom tailoring job. In newly blossoming flowers, the tube is tipped with a fused set of pollen-rich stamens that brush the Hummingbird’s head, leaving a precious cargo of pollen for the little bird to take to the next Cardinal-flower it visits. In the picture above, you can see the yellow pollen at the tip of the stamen resting on the Hummingbird’s head.

As the flowers mature, the stamens are succeeded by the flower’s female parts, called pistils, which are now perfectly positioned to receive the pollen transported to them on the head of a Hummingbird. As a plant matures, it will likely have flowers in their female stage lower on the stem, with flowers higher on the stem in the male stage. In the photo above, the flowers on either side of the Hummingbird are lower on the plant’s stem than the one from which the Hummer is drinking, and they have matured enough to be offering the reddish stigmas as pollen receptors at the tips of the pistils. The little bird drinks systematically from the lowest flowers in a cluster to the highest, bringing the pollen acquired from the male flowers of one plant to the female flowers of the next. This helps increase the likelihood of cross pollination, which will result in genetically stronger offspring.

In between visits of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird, keep an eye out for butterflies. Cardinal-flowers don’t offer much of a landing platform for pollinators, since their perfect partner, the Hummingbird, hovers and doesn’t need one. (Why invite freeloaders?) But Swallowtail butterflies are also willing to put forth the effort to grasp the tenuous flower platform and hover for a drink. Spicebush Swallowtails like the one pictured below seem to be especially drawn to these flowers. From the Cardinal-flower’s perspective, however, they are a much less effective pollinator. The butterfly’s anatomy is not so perfectly tailored to acquiring and distributing the pollen of this plant, so successful pollination by a butterfly would be much more random.

Spicebush Swallowtail drinking nectar from Cardinal-flower

Cardinal-flowers depend on Ruby-throated Hummingbirds to effect pollination and continuation of the species. In return, the Hummingbirds depend on this reliable nectar source.

Cardinal-flower can grow to a height of three feet, and will tolerate sun to light shade. Although it prefers moist soil, established plants usually do well even in hot, dry summer weather.

This gorgeous gaudy plant with its bold blossoms is a wonderful way to entice Ruby-throated Hummingbirds to visit your garden.

Purple Giant Hyssop

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Mary Anne Borge

Pictured here are an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and a Bumble Bee, dining together amicably at Purple Giant Hyssop (Agastache scrophulariifolia) flowers. This graceful plant is quite an attraction to butterflies and other beneficial pollinators, including many species of bees. They may be seen on a single flower spike drinking contentedly.

Ruby-throated Hummingbirds may also sip nectar from the tiny purple tubular flowers. Although the individual flowers are tiny, they can still accommodate this thirsty, industrious little bird.

Generally blooming from late July or early August through September, like so many other plants this year Purple Giant Hyssop started blooming many weeks earlier than normal, encouraged by the unusually warm temperatures. It started blooming in June, and shows no sign of stopping.

Reaching to a height of two to four feet, Purple Giant Hyssop can tolerate part shade to full sun, and prefers a moist soil. Characteristic of the mint family, this plant has a square stem, and opposite leaves that are fragrant when crushed.

Tiny flowers mass in showy spikes five to six inches long, adorning the candelabra-like plant. As with other mint family members, blooming takes place out over a long period, since the individual flowers on each spike don’t all open at once. The flowers open gradually over a period of several weeks, maximizing the plant’s chances of successful pollination, with the assistance of its insect partners. This long bloom period is good for the pollinators, too, since it offers a continuing supply of food. Individual flowers on the spike open to a tasteful shade of purple when in bloom, and provide a softer background color when the flower is spent.

If the dry flower spikes are left standing in the garden after the bloom period is finished, you may find that you have an unexpected bonus: a source of food for birds. Local Chickadees and Goldfinches may seek out the seeds that result from flowers pollinated by the summer visits of butterflies and bees. Left in the garden, the flower heads will last through the winter, retaining their shape and form. Purple Giant Hyssop will readily reproduce from seed, so if you prefer that it not spread, deadhead the spent flowers before they produce and release their seeds.

If pale yellow is more your color, there is a close relative, Yellow Giant Hyssop (Agastache nepetoides), with similar characteristics, but pale yellow flowers.

Both Purple and Yellow Giant Hyssop are rated as imperiled species in New Jersey because of their rarity, primarily due to habitat destruction.

Purple Giant Hyssop is easy to grow, and those fragrant leaves make it deer resistant. It is native in the eastern United States from New Hampshire to Georgia, and as far north and west as Ontario province, Minnesota and North Dakota, and south to Kansas, so it has adapted to the growing conditions in this broad area.

Include this plant in your garden, and enjoy the butterflies, birds and bees that visit.

Juvenile Downy Woodpeckers Learn to Forage for Food

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Mary Anne Borge

For the past week or so I’ve been watching a family of Downy Woodpeckers in my back yard. My first glimpse was of an adult female feeding an insect to one of her offspring.

Since then, Mom has made herself scarce, and Dad seems to have the assignment of teaching the kids how to eat convenience food from our feeder.

The male flies to the feeder for a seed, then to the trunk of a Flowering Dogwood tree where he uses the hollowed out space of a knothole to mash the seed, repeatedly pecking at it with his beak to prepare it for consumption. Sort of like using a mortar and pestle to make a paste. Once the food is properly prepared, he feeds his offspring, occasionally having a bite himself.

Initially I saw the adult male with just one other bird who was flying pretty confidently, so at first I thought I might be watching a mate feeding ritual between an adult male and female.

Then three Downies appeared together, an adult male in the company of two birds that were lacking the signature red patch on the back of the head that distinguishes the adult male Downy from the female and juvenile Downies. The adult male fed both of the other birds, and there wasn’t much squabbling, so I had to take a more careful look to be sure of what was going on.

On closer inspection, the birds that are being fed have black plumage that is somewhat duller than the adults, the white streak above the eye is broader and ends toward the back of the head with white speckles, and there are white speckles just above the beak, characteristics of juvenile birds. Mystery solved!

So two young Downy Woodpeckers have just about successfully fledged. They’re still looking for handouts from Mom and Dad, but they’re learning to feed themselves.

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: Male Downy Woodpecker pausing for a snack

: Male Downy Woodpecker feeding juvenile

: Male Downy Woodpecker feeding juvenile

: Male Downy Woodpecker feeding juvenile. The juvenile’s black plumage is somewhat duller than the adult’s, the white eye stripe is broader and ends in white speckles; some speckling over the beak