Our Bee Balm (Monarda didyma) is flowering, which means that female Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds and other pollinaters are in feeding frenzy mode here. We took these images yesterday.
Female Ruby-Throats (Archilochus colubris), which don’t have ruby throats, reportedly are the only full-time summer resident hummers in Maine. The chauvinistic males of their species are the ones with the red throats; they mate here in the spring and apparently most keep moving on to Canada to hang out with the boys and avoid nesting chores.
Ruby-Throats are less than four inches long. But, they can fly horizontally up to 25 miles per hour and dive up to 40. Their wingbeats average 53 per second and, when in passing gear, the beats can reach 200 a second – at which point the ones in our garden become iridescent green blurs to the unaided eye. See also the image in the first Comment space.
(Brooklin, Maine)