Greetings from beautiful western North Carolina, sometimes called the variety vacation land. It does indeed have a variety of features from Mount Mitchell, just over 6683k feet in the west with Canadian-like climate down to the south-east coast to Wilmington, with a semi-tropical climate.
I live in the western piedmont, or foothills, of the Blue Ridge mountains and the Parkway -which is about 20 miles away. In those 20 miles the elevation rises from 1000 feet to a little over 3000 feet -- quite a steep climb. We don't get much snow here. Last winter we only got a couple inches twice, which melted soon after, but up there in Boone and Jefferson, they got plenty of the white stuff.
I feed birds winter and summer and hummers in the summer. They haven't arrived yet from their amazing migration across the Gulf of Mexico. (good luck, little fellers!). I expect them shortly and I have to be ready because they fly around the large front window searching, sometimes looking in my window as if to say, "Well, we're here, you do your part." They have me trained!
A few summers back I got them so tame I could hold the bottom of the feeder and they would alight on it. But I couldn't get them to land on my hand. I got some pictures and will post them later. I have only seen the ruby-throated here, the male with the beautiful ruby iridescent throat, but my nephew who lives nearby says he saw a couple of different ones, but couldn't identify them.
Speaking of hummers, when I was in Peru six years ago, up in the Andes at 11k feet, I saw the world's largest humming bird, the Andean. It was as big as a little bird we have here, the ruby and golden-crowned kinglets - pretty amazing to see a hummer that big.
I'm off for now, but more about my birds next time...bye.
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