Rita I'm so glad you are sharing the Night Heron series here. As I told you previously, wonderful photgraphs and documentation of the development of the chicks.


Rita, you saw the hummer in winter? If you see one this winter, http://www.rubythroat.org/OtherSpeciesMain.html, is interested in reports of hummingbirds wintering on the East coast. Scroll to the bottom of the page and look for a box with a very pale blue background.

A few years ago, a birdwatching friend who lived a few blocks from me identified a Rufous Hummingbird in her yard in late January. (It was a mild winter, and she quickly put out a feeder for it. It stayed for several weeks.) The Hummingbird folks came out and documented it. It had already been banded and had been down off the coast of South Carolina.

Was it on one of our birding threads or in the news that I read, not too long ago, that it has recently been discovered that Ruby-throated (if my memory serves) have recently been discovered have a second breeding season in Mexico and Central America. The article included ponderings about if this is true of other species that breed in North America in spring and summer, and wondering if loss of breeding habitat in their wintering grounds may account for otherwise unexplained declines in populations of some bird species in North America.