Close Encounters: Hummingbirds and butterflies are back

Hummers are here Last weekend was a great one for hummingbirds. Sightings came from all over the city. Jane Brumley reported the first hummingbird she had seen in Knotts Island and moving north, Dennis McClenny has two males and two females in his Pungo yard. Karen Beatty saw one in Hunt Club Forest and Dianne Haack had a tiny visitor in her Stumpy Lake neighborhood.

Chuck Hudson had his first hummer in Princess Anne Hills and one flew through my neighborhood at the North End, too. Lynne Lindsay in Little Neck had not put her feeder out when her first arrived. The little bird was obviously an old friend because it arrived at her window and "flashed us with his red throat." She hurriedly got some nectar out to feed the hungry traveler. Another First Renelle Maddrey in Thoroughgood reported her first Monarch butterfly sighting.

Osprey Blues & News Rick H. Kennerly wants to give a Bad Citizen Award to some folks flying remote-control aircraft at Lynnhaven District Park, just off First Colonial Road.

"Despite being warned by walkers, some members of this group stubbornly persisted in harassing a nest-building osprey with their model planes," Kennerly wrote, "until the bird flew to the ground some 100 yards away, obviously disturbed by the flybys. Before their buzzing attacks, this majestic bird was building a nest on a Lynnhaven Middle School ball diamond light pole."

On the other hand, Miriam Manning said she has a "front row seat" to watch the activities of a pair of ospreys that built a nest on a power line tower at the end of her cul-de-sac in Strawbridge. Manning described the nest as a "huge top hat resting upon the tower."

Gannet Rescue Andrew Fine and his nephews, Rob Fine and Mike Fine, helped rescue a beautiful sea-going gannet with a broken wing that they first spied on the roof of a motel across from their Runnymede Office building. They were trying to get help for the bird when it flew into the middle of traffic on 21st Street. Two motorists stopped and managed to get the gannet off the street and corral it in a parking lot. The Fines penned the bird in with a piece of elevator padding until SPCA volunteer Rick Stewart arrived to take it to a wildlife rehabilitator.

If you have had a sighting of your own, email Mary Reid Barrow at  at barrow1@cox.net.