I couldn’t help but to observe how much larger  our cute little patch of bee balm has become over the years, but rest assured, the ruby throated hummingbirds have definitely taken notice.  My first attempt to record the little rascals was by utilizing one of the trail cameras, A.K.A. “Mud Cams’ I had used on the cliff swallows.  Since the movement of the hummingbirds are much faster than than the triggering device or the shutter speed of the trail camera, I’ve yeilded limited success.  So I decided to use my car as an overheated bird blind and stake out the bee balm patch for a couple of hours.  As it turns out there were 4 hummingbirds that began to feed fairly actively after 4PM.  I saw a male, a female and 2 others, possibly juveniles.  I’m not sure how the rainfall will affect the flowers, but being the botanical novice that I am, my guess is at the time of this writing, the bee balm flowers are probably halfway through their flowering cycle.

If you have hummingbirds in your neighborhood, the best time to look for them is around sunrise to about 8:00AM then again from around 4:30PM until around sunset.