Yards abuzz with tiny travelers

Ever seen a hummingbird do the breast stroke? Trish Meyer and her husband, Chris, have witnessed this phenomenon in the hummingbird bath of their Sherman Oaks home.

“They move their little wings like this,” Trish says, demonstrating the proper arc, “and paddle with their teeny little feet. Hummingbirds need water as much as they need food.”

To a hummingbird, the Meyers’ garden must feel like a gourmet cafe with a 10-page menu. The sloping, tree-studded third of an acre mixes native and nonnative plants with overlapping seasons for a steady supply of brightly colored nectar-filled flowers, including more than 100 species and cultivars of salvias. It’s a popular rest stop for migrating hummers, a place to tank up (and perhaps take a dip) between breeding to the north and wintering in the south. It’s also a safe harbor for the nonmigratory hummers looking to nest.

Local gardeners can get a good mix of hummingbirds in their yard, says Kimball Garrett, ornithology collections manager at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in Exposition Park. The birds are called penor by the native Tongva people here and beija-flores (flower-kissers) in Brazil. Six of the 300-plus species are prevalent in Southern California. Three are year-round occupants: Anna’s and Allen’s (both widespread) and Costa’s. The black-chinned, Rufous and Calliope hummingbirds are migratory species that feed but don’t breed in this region.

Although hummers prefer a varied diet, a large garden is not crucial. Small gardens are equally attractive -- and can be important to their survival.

Even gardens without habitat for nesting “can make a difference in the birds’ individual lives and help their populations. You may be the only nectar stop for miles,” says naturalist Sheri L. Williamson, co-director of the Southeastern Arizona Bird Observatory (www.sabo.org) in Tucson, Ariz., and author of “A Field Guide to Hummingbirds of North America.”

Hummingbirds require an astonishing amount of food, garnered in minuscule portions from hundreds of flowers each day, to sustain their high metabolism and their ravenous young.

Williamson, a licensed hummingbird bander (someone who puts tiny bands on the birds for scientific study), says that coastal California gardeners bear extra responsibility for the hummingbirds. “You have to think and plan for their resources throughout the year,” she says. She offers simple tips for starting a hummingbird garden.

“Consider native plants,” she says. “The birds recognize them, and they’re part of the food chain. Local insects feed on them too.”

Next, include plants that bloom consistently through late winter and spring, when resident hummingbirds are nesting, as well as other plants that will flower in the dry heat of late summer, to accommodate southbound birds.

To select the right tree, Williamson says, “think like a female hummingbird.” They prefer horizontal branches that are not prone to breakage, with thin, dead twigs at the fringes that serve as sentinel perches. Foliage should be dense enough to seclude, provide shade and shed rain, but still be impregnable.

“Next time you find a nest,” she adds, “pay attention to that plant’s characteristics.”

And while you’re at it, examine the nest too. The downy walnut-sized cup, built for two jelly bean-sized white eggs, consists of fuzz from nearby foliage (western sycamore, Platanus racemosa, is a preferred source) and bits of lichen, leaves and other plant matter added for camouflage. Spider webs, Williamson says, are the glue that binds it all together. Spiders and their kin are vital to hummingbirds.

“A good bird garden is a buggy garden,” the Natural History Museum’s Garrett says. “Hummingbirds eat a lot of arthropods -- small spiders, aphids and gnats.”

Hummingbirds love sugary nectar, but bugs supply protein to adults and their babies. Birds that breed in winter rely on early-flowering natives -- particularly currants and gooseberries (Ribes species) and manzanitas (Arctostaphylos species) -- whose nectar-rich blossoms also contain insects. “Everything works together,” Trish says. With a steady food source, her husband adds, birds can produce more than one brood each year.

Female hummers are attentive mothers, primping and repairing the nests, turning the eggs with their feet, fending off predators such as cats, birds and large insects, and feeding their young about every 10 minutes during daylight hours. The chicks grow quickly and stretch their nest perilously out of shape. If all goes well, about three weeks after hatching, they exercise and whir their wings and, coaxed by their mother, take their first awkward flight.

“You can tell they are babies by their ‘waggy’ tails,” Trish says. “They’re still unstable when hovering and use their tails like a rudder.”

The Meyers have noticed that adults only go to flowers that are familiar, but the babies will eat anything and head straight for new plants.

It doesn’t take much to bring out the hummingbirds. They’re well-established and used to living in city landscapes. But it wasn’t always so.

Urbanization is disruptive to natural habitats, but Garrett says the influx of nonnative plants -- especially winter-flowering eucalyptus, bottlebrush and Cape honeysuckle -- “smoothed out the seasonality” of food and altered the habits of migratory and resident species.

The most dramatic change occurred with the Allen’s hummingbird, a species with two distinct populations: a migratory “subspecies” that passes through this region in late winter and again in late summer, and a resident group that had existed only on the Channel Islands.

At some point, Garrett says, the island subspecies found its way to the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where it became common by the early 20th century. By the 1970s, Allen’s hummingbirds were seen from coastal Orange County to Malibu and into the L.A. basin. By the 1990s, they had spread into the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys, and now they can be found nesting in San Diego.

In some areas, Garrett says, resident Allen’s are now as familiar as the Anna’s hummingbird, Southern California’s most common.

“They’re moving inland,” Williamson says. “It probably has to do with gardens. It’s evolution in action ... the evolution of an urban hummingbird. They’re learning to live with people in new environments.”

For the Meyers, that environment includes a hummingbird bath. The tiny birds have special needs: water that is slow-moving and very shallow, no deeper than a quarter of an inch. “And not much noise,” Trish adds.

“The pump moves a thin sheet of water over that big flat rock,” Chris says, explaining their setup. The flow is constant but gentle -- a special step that they, unlike many other gardeners, take to ensure a steady stream of wild visitors. “People want waterfalls, rocks and the sound of crashing water,” he says, “but not the birds.”

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How to lure hummingbirds

For nest-building and surveillance, hummingbirds like western sycamore, oak and avocado trees. For food, they turn to California native plants -- the most natural and familiar source -- as well as bright, tubular blossoms that yield plenty of nectar. (Fragrance isn’t important because the birds have a weak sense of smell.) Even a small assortment of the following plants will draw hummingbirds year-round.

Dry gardens

Aloe species

Beard tongue (Penstemon species)

Bladderpod (Isomeris arborea)

Bottlebrush (Callistemon species)

California currant and gooseberry (Ribes species)

California fuchsia (Zauschneria californica)

Cape honeysuckle (Tecoma capensis)

Chuparosa (Justicia californica)

Lavatera species

Grevillea species

Kangaroo paw (Anigozanthos species)

Manzanita (Arctostaphylos species)

Red-hot poker (Kniphofia species)

Sage (Salvia species)

Moist gardens

Citrus

Cestrum species

Columbine (Aquilegia, especially A. formosa)

Coral bells (Heuchera species)

Cypress vine (Ipomoea quamoclit)

Flowering maple (Abutilon species)

Fuchsia

Heliconia species

Iochroma species

Sage (Salvia species)

Shrimp plant (Justicia brandegeana)

-- Lili Singer

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Resources

To learn more about hummingbirds, try these resources:

“A Field Guide to Hummingbirds of North America” (Petersen Field Guides) by Sheri L. Williamson (Houghton Mifflin, 2002).

“The Hummingbird Garden: Turning Your Garden, Window Box, or Backyard Into a Beautiful Home for Hummingbirds,” Mathew Tekulsky (Harvard Common Press, 1999).

“Hummingbirds of North America: The Photographic Guide,” by Steve N.G. Howell (Princeton University Press, 2003).

“Hummingbirds: Their Life and Behavior,” by Esther Quesada Tyrrell, photographs by Robert A. Tyrrell (Crown, 1985).

Hummingbird

Society, www.hummingbirdsociety.net.

Festival, www.audubon.org/local/sanctuary/kernriver/hummer_fest.htm.

Southeastern Arizona Bird Observatory, www.sabo.org.

Schreiber Hall of Birds, Natural History Museum, 900 Exposition Blvd., L.A.; www.nhm.org.

-- Lili Singer

Lili Singer can be reached at home@latimes.com.