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July 04, 2002 - In praise of the hummingbirdJuly 4, 2002 • The Suffolk Times In praise of the hummingbird Watch for this beautiful, light -green luna moth around yourlporch tlightsUattnight r If you have not seen one before, you will be amazed at the size and beauty of this night - flying moth. THE OTHER DAY MY SON told me he had a hummingbird's nest over his driveway in Mattituck. This brought back memories of years ago when I found my first nest in Riverhead. Later I would find one in North Woods over on the south side and then one in Orient, but the first one was the most memo- Suffolk by gh Watch umming- rable. It was here, not two FOCUS f feet away, I was intro - ON d duced to this NATURE l little minia- by Paul t ture wonder. Stoutenburgh T The ruby - throated humming- bird, as most of us know, is foun only east of the Mississippi and it is here it delights all those who see it. The female ruby- throat is small- er than and lacks the brilliance of the male. It is the male that daz- zles us with his brilliant, irides- cent ruby throat that gives it its name. The vibrant colors of all hummingbirds are not pigment in the feathers but actually movable scales of colors that can be manipulated, almost like turning on a switch, and when seen in the right light, the colors are unfor- gettable. No other bird can maneuver like a hummingbird. It almost duplicates the movements of a helicopter: It can hover, move ahead, backwards and, of course, up and down, all the time with its tiny little wings beating anywhere from 50 to 70 times per second. I've often been asked, "What do hummingbirds do at night if they have to feed almost continually to keep up their energy during the day ?" Well, nature has taken care of that. They go into a sort of hiberna- tion, their heart rate drops and their body temperature drops. In this way, they conserve their energy and make it through the night. Once dawn has broken, the hum- mingbird immediately snaps out of its slumber and proceeds on its feed- ing binge, which is kept up almost all day long. To cope with this continual feeding, the hummingbird has a long bill and from this long bill it pro- duces a long hollow tube of a tongue that can reach into the deepest parts of a flower to seek out its nectar. Like most birds, when winter approaches and the flowers start to disappear, the hummingbirds head south. But before that, the ruby - throats build up an extra layer of fat, equal to half their body weight, to hold them over on their long jour- ney.One of those long journeys is the crossing of the Gulf of Mexico — nonstop. It seems an impossible task, but somehow this tiny bit of fluff weighing about three grams makes it and spends the winter in the tropics. The nest my son found is like all the ones I had previously found, a real work of wonder. Inside is fluffy down from plants and ferns in which the pea -sized eggs are laid, and then the outside is coated with coarser material. The final touch to the nest is the placing of lichens, those little gray -green growths that we find on trees, that the hummingbird attaches with spider web to the side of its nest, which makes it look like part of the tree. You have to see one to truly appreciate it. I had the privilege of watching a hummingbird feed its young some years ago when I was photographing from a blind, or a hide as the English call them. From inside this burlap - covered blind I'd poked my camera lens through and watched the female come in and feed. To see its long bill go down the gaping mouths of these tiny bumblebee -size babies, one has to wonder why the pointed bill does- n't come out the other end. The interesting part is birds, like everything else, have to get rid of their waste. The way they do it is to put their rear end over the nest edge and excrete their waste into the air. Toilet trained, I guess you could call it. So, if you have a hummingbird coming to your feeder or in your gar- den, count yourself lucky, for it is years since I have had one nesting nearby. (Dorothy, a good neighbor, just brought us a new hummingbird feeder that hangs on a stand with a plant they should like and hopefully this will bring some hummingbirds to us.) The other day as we came to the back door of our house, we f the wings of a luna moth on the ground. Evidently the moth had been caught by a predator and th culprit had eaten the body of this gorgeous, pea -green moth and dis carded the wings. If you have never seen a luna moth, it is one of our most beautiful moths. At one time we thought we had lost them all on the East End due to massive spraying of our marshes and woods with DDT in the hopes of getting rid of mosquitoes and other pests. This blanket spraying not only killed the pests but every other insect in its path. Since those early days of igno- ance, spraying has become more elective and less potent, but we ad to go through that period of earning, and in doing so we lost ur moths and butterflies and other beneficial insects. Years went by without anyone knowing if any luna moths survived. Then some young scientists in the butterfly and moth world brought a female luna moth to our woods in a cage. Now, mating moths have the ability to detect a female from miles away. The idea was to put the female in our woods in hopes of attracting a male. Sure enough, the next orning when we checked, we ound a male luna moth clinging to the side of the cage. Evidently, slowly but surely, the world was he itself from the spraying that had done so much damage to our insect world. The luna moth is about three inch- es or more in length and has a grace- ful, sweeping, almost feathery tail at the end of each wing, which sepa- rates it from any other moth. Hopefully some day you'll find one clinging to your screen, around your porch or perhaps around a light at night, and if you do you'll be one of the few who are privileged to see this most gorgeous, light -green moth of the night.