By Mark Flippo, Contributing Writer

Snow falling in the desert makes you stop what you are doing and stare. Watching large, wet, droopy flakes drop and melt is like watching hummingbirds in slow motion: you just don’t normally put the two together. But on a snowy desert morning in November, we saw both happen simultaneously.

Most people think of hummingbirds as warm-weather creatures, visitors from the tropics that grace our yards only in the summer. The truth is hummingbirds are very resilient and adaptable, able to withstand a variety of climatic extremes, and here in the desert hummingbirds are present year-round. The players change with the seasons: summer time breeders (Black-Chinned and Lucifer), fall migrants (Rufous and Calliope), winter residents (Anna’s and the rare Costa’s, pictured below). If you have a year–round garden with flowering plants and/or a feeder with a 20% sugar solution, you can enjoy the show all year. The winter chapter though, requires that the observer be a bit more attentive when it comes to feeder maintenance.

Our winters are generally mild; overnight freezes are few and far between, but they do occur. Hummingbirds manage to get through these extreme cold periods with a rather remarkable physiological adaptation: Normally operating at 104 –110° F body temperature, their hearts beating 1250 times per minute while active, they can quickly enter a torpid state when the temperatures drop to freezing, lowering their core temperature by 50%, and lowering their heart rate to 55 beats per minute. The cold never touches them.

The flip side of this feat, though, is that the hummers need to fire up quickly in the morning. This means they must start feeding to replenish their energy reserves. If you have conditioned a hummingbird to come to a feeder, that’s where it’s headed first thing, looking for the quick sugar fix.

Here’s the catch: adding sugar to water lowers the water’s freezing temperature, so even if the air temperature is at or below freezing, the sugar solution stays liquid, kind of like a super slushy. If an energy-challenged hummingbird sucks in the super cold liquid, before it can metabolize the sugar for fuel, the power switch flips off. The cold jolt literally knocks them out. They can fall from the perch unconscious and, if not rescued quickly, may die from exposure or fall prey to predators.

The solution is easy: if you feed hummingbirds in the winter, bring in your feeders on extremely cold nights, keep them at room temperature, and then bring them back out in the morning.  

I know this. Did I remember?  Nope.

Snow falling in the desert makes you stop what you are doing and stare. There I stood, steaming coffee cup in hand, staring out the front door, watching the snow flakes begin to fall, when I realized the hummingbird feeder was still hanging outside. Uh-oh….

Then he showed up, the little male Costa’s hummingbird, who had been around, off and on, since mid-September. A singer, this one — more melodious than his cousin the Anna’s — perching on the mesquites and ocotillos, all hunched over with exertion as he expels the song: seeeee-zeeeee-oooooo. In the sun, his brilliant purple head and throat glow, his gorget flares to the sides of his neck like sabers. A very handsome fellow, indeed, and one quite rare in Texas.

Yes, this is a special little hummingbird, and I’m about to kill him.

Just like the snow, everything is in slow motion; the Costa’s approaches the feeder, gliding between the flakes; my mouth opens, lips and tongue forming a “NO”; my coffee cup-bearing hand rises, a vain attempt to ward him off. Too late.  He’s on the feeder, head bent over, bill deep in the little yellow flower…. and then he kind of, well, comes undone, like one of those little toy figures you can make dance by pushing on the bottom of a wooden base, releasing tension on an interior elastic band. Only this time the elastic doesn’t snap back. He just tips over, collapsed on the feeder, one wing askew.

I’m out the door.

In the seconds in takes to reach the feeder, the Costa’s has fallen to the ground. I scoop him up in one hand, cup the other around, and blow warm air into the tiny cavity of space between my palms. Back indoors, the entire household is alert to the rescue operation; Bache (Pothole), the dog, is certain I have something good to eat, since I keep putting my mouth to my hands. Cosmo, the cat, acts uninterested, but lurks closeby, just in case something comes of all the commotion. And Kymi, my wife, is ready to perform surgery if need be.

I can feel the hummer’s heartbeat, like a small motor thrumming against my skin. Slowly, I open my cupped hands to peek. Kymi peers in too, even snaps a picture. A little straight bill poking out of a brilliant purple face and crown, little black dot-eyes staring us in the face. Wow.

I close my hands again, feel again the motor thrum.  Just one more peek….

And out he zooms. I’m amazed. Just minutes before, the hummer was apparently dead, but now it’s fully mobile, on the move – and in our house.

Kymi has the presence of mind to turn off the ceiling fan, which the Costa’s immediately figures out makes a nice perch. So too, does the light over the kitchen island. An old tin candle holder on the wall is too low, too close to lurking Cosmos and over-excited Pothole.

Kymi retrieves the feeder, fills it with room temperature solution, and hangs it near the glass doors. The Costa’s is a quick learner; he begins feeding within a few minutes, and spends the remainder of the morning hours inside with us, sipping sugar water that’s just right. Outside, snow continues to fall.

Eventually the Costa’s liberated himself. Kymi had opened the glass doors, once the snow stopped and the sun peeked out from the clouds. The hummer made several visits to the feeder before realizing the door was open, then buzzed out into the cool and sunny day. Apparently the experience didn’t scar our little friend: he remained another month around the house, singing from his perches, chasing off the bigger Anna’s hummingbirds, and visiting the feeder. That feeder now comes inside whenever the night threatens to get too cold.

Mark Flippo is the Supervisory Ranger in Big Bend National Park. When he is not tiling his outdoor kitchen, he loves to bird, listen to the Grateful Dead, and tell stories of his travels in Central and South America – though not all at the same time.