Ruby Throated Hummingbird Mini Original

This spring, I invested in a smart hummingbird feeder for our backyard. It hangs on a maple tree branch out our kitchen window, and lets me know who visits with photos and video. I’ve been faithfully making new sugar-water nectar every few days and keeping the feeder clean. I was inspired to create a piece with a native wildflower they love: Wild Bergamot, or Bee Balm.

About this hummingbird (Cornell Lab or Ornithology:

“A flash of green and red, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird is eastern North America’s sole breeding hummingbird. These brilliant, tiny, precision-flying creatures glitter like jewels in the full sun, then vanish with a zip toward the next nectar source. Feeders and flower gardens are great ways to attract these birds, and some people turn their yards into buzzing clouds of hummingbirds each summer. Enjoy them while they’re around; by early fall, they’re bound for Central America.”

Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are common in suburbs and towns, and can become quite bold, feeding at hanging plants and feeders on your porch or next to your windows.

• You can attract Ruby-throated Hummingbirds to your backyard by setting up hummingbird feeders or by planting tubular flowers (especially RED).

• Make sugar water mixtures with about one-quarter cup of sugar per cup of water (1.5 cups of water with 6 tablespoons of sugar). Avoid food coloring and only use white table sugar (not raw/unprocessed–contains iron toxic to hummingbirds).

• Change the water before it becomes cloudy or discolored, and remember that during hot weather, sugar water ferments rapidly, producing toxic alcohol.

• Be careful about where you put your hummingbird feeders, as some cats have learned to lie in wait to catch visiting hummingbirds.

About Wild Bergamot:

An aromatic member of the mint family, this perennial packs a punch as part of pollinator and songbird habitat, shoreline stabilization, competition with invasive species, and medicinal uses. It is also known as “bee balm,” “wild oregano,” “Oswego tea,” and “purple wizard head.” Blooms from June to September and growth is clumped from 2-4 feet in open woods, prairies, fields, roadsides  in “almost every US state. Monarda fistulosa” refers to the tubular petals of the flowers whose colors vary from pale to deep pink or rosy lavender. The blooms that are set on a whorl of pink to red-tinted bracts have been described as “ragged pompoms.” Foliage is grayish-green to dark green with lance-shaped leaves. Not to be confused with the bergamot fruit–the bergamot herb is named after the bergamot flavoring, which is named after the fruit. The fruit is named after the town of Bergamo in Italy. The name Oswego tea comes from the Oswego Native Americans in present-day Oswego County in upstate New York. The Oswego people would brew tea out of the leaves of the plant, a process they taught to the European settlers, another alternative after the Boston Tea Party.

A pollinator favorite, bergamot is a host plant for the sphinx moth, an important pollinator of prairies, and is a valuable source of nectar for monarch butterflies. Historically used as a type of “Vick’s vapor rub,” if you will, with her strong minty aroma and antimicrobial properties helping with cough and cold symptoms.

Lakota people call her “elk medicine plant,” referring to the use of bergamot for sore throats of young men hoping to court a sweetheart by singing to her–often for weeks on end.

Original mixed media on raw stretched canvas with hard maple float frame.

Alternative hardwood frame available upon request at no extra cost. Please email me with any questions.