New Hummingbird Note Cards!

This is one of my favorite times of year!  It's the time when local Ruby-throated hummingbird juveniles are out of the nest and moving around, and northern males are migrating through, fattening up on insects as they get ready for their long migration journey across the Gulf of Mexico.

The males leave first and are usually gone from east Tennessee by the middle of September.  Amazingly, that is only a couple of weeks away.  They will be followed by the females who have finished nesting, and the juveniles will leave last, along with the late nesting females.

In the spring I refurbished my hummingbird garden and added more hummer-attracting plants--cardinal flowers, black and blue salvia, autumn salvia and pineapple sage.  Pentas, lantana, and butterfly weed are more for butterflies, but they attract hummingbirds too.  I then topped the garden off with nine hummingbird feeders.

Every time I have the opportunity and there's good light, I plant myself near the flowers and enjoy the challenge of capturing a hummingbird in flight, nectaring a flower or sometimes while they're perched on the feeder--fun, funny and beautiful!  

All of this hummingbird watching stirs a deep love and enjoyment of hummingbirds and inspires art.  

We have just spent a day of celebrating hummingbirds at our Wonder of Hummingbirds Festival sponsored by the Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society and Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville. Visit by blog post on the festival and check out the T-shirts the volunteers are wearing!  My male hummingbird study, created about this time last year, became the logo art for the festival and was printed on the festival T-shirts and the banner!  (above)

To visit more hummingbird art on this blog visit:  hummingbirds.

Wonder of Hummingbird Festival August 24th--TOMORROW!

Join us at the Wonder of Hummingbird Festival tomorrow, August 24th and Ijams Nature Center, Knoxville Tennessee.

A fun, exciting event that will be filled with hummingbirds!  Hummingbird banding with Mark Armstrong our very gentle Master Bander of songbirds and hummingbirds, expert speakers on several different nature subjects including bluebirds, hummingbirds, bears and wolves, vendors with plants and nature crafts, lots of food vendors and wildlife demonstrations!  Great fun and education for the whole family!  

Visit this link to get more information and complete directions:  Wonder of Hummingbird Festival

To visit more hummingbird art on this blog visit:  hummingbirds

More information about hummingbird banding and hummingbirds.

The Hummingbird Days of Summer

Breeding season is coming to a close for hummingbirds in our area, except for a few late nesters.  Lots of juveniles are visiting the feeders and hummingbirds from northern areas are starting to migrate.  This is when activity at nectar feeders and in gardens becomes very busy and its also my favorite time to paint hummingbirds!

The above hummingbird visiting a black and blue salvia is one of my sketches this season.
Below, a male hummingbird visits the black and blue blossoms.  (Some varieties are the deep blue below, others look deep purple.)

Besides enjoying myself, I'm getting ready for the Wonder of Hummingbird Festival in Knoxville, TN, August 24th at Ijams Nature Center.  We will be celebrating hummingbirds and their migration with Mark Armstrong, Master Bander, who will demonstrate how he bands hummingbirds so scientists can discover more about the health and behavior of the population.