June 1, 2026 Hummers, Columbines, and Road Work
Martin caught the tail end of the morning hummer rush, then noticed we had some perfect Columbines and then the road crew arrived.
Martin keeps seeing Blackchins, when this year we’ve got mostly Broadtails! You can see in the poster image above the split primaries of the male Broad Tail.
This is the Rocky Mountain Blue variety of columbine. It is the Colorado state flower.
This is the Cameo Mix variety.
When you live on a dirt road, it has to be maintained! The maintainer is one big machine! It’s dry enough that they’ve got to bring water up so that they can actually do the work. The pink is road base that’s brought in. It’s almost water proof when compacted (by traffic), so it keeps the mud problem down.
Start of June and we’re feedind about 300 birds. Last year at this time we were feeding 150 or so. The drought means that the wild flowers are a bit scarce, but hummers do remember where the best “flowers” are, too.