August is peak hummingbird season in Colorado. You can tell by the otherworldly trills and buzzing in the trees as tiny birds work feeders and flowers to prepare for the long migration south. Hummingbirds remember particular feeders and flowery meadows during their migration. Banded hummingbirds have arrived back at the same yards, meadows and feeders on the exact same day every year and will nest in the same tree.

The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic has produced detailed studies of the courtship behaviors of broad-tailed hummingbirds, using high-speed video, acoustic analysis, and computational models of hummingbird color vision to determine how a male’s speed, the sound his wings make at the bottom of dramatic dives and the way the iridescent feathers at his neck appear coordinate during the display to females.

Photojournalist Dean Krakel, too, has been paying attention to his thrumming neighbors — called a charm, a glitter or a bouquet when they’re in groups — in the high mountain valley where he lives.

A hummingbird hovers in midair with mountains and a faint rainbow in the background under a cloudy sky.
A broad-tailed hummingbird hovers near a feeding station as a rain storm clears in the Sawatch Mountains near Tin Cup. Broad-tailed hummingbirds migrate between the high mountain meadows of the Rocky Mountains and winter grounds in the highlands of southern and central Mexico.
A hand in a plaid sleeve holds a feeder as four hummingbirds hover and drink, with a blurred outdoor background.
A charm of ruby-throated hummingbirds alights on a person’s hand to drink sugar water from a small feeder. Hummingbirds typically weigh about as much as a nickel. They must consume twice their weight in nectar daily to survive, but they also eat insects.
A hummingbird with reddish-brown feathers hovers in midair near a feeder, with mountains and sky in the blurred background.
Rufous hummingbirds are known for their brilliant colors, aggressive temperament and for the extraordinary distance of their migration, flying over 3,000 miles from their winter range in southern Mexico to Canada, the Pacific Northwest and Alaska where they spend the summer. Hummingbirds are powerful flyers, able to cover 500 miles without a stop during migration.
A hummingbird drinks from a red and yellow feeder while resting on a paper towel in a green container.
An injured ruby throated hummingbird sips from a small feeder filled with sugar water. Hummingbirds can live up to four years but can be harmed by cold weather or be hurt in accidents, as this one was. They also have many predators, including cats, snakes, fish, other birds and even insects.
Seven hummingbirds feed from a red hanging bird feeder against a blue sky with white clouds.
A charm of broad-tailed and ruby-throated hummingbirds hover around a feeding station near Taylor Reservoir to drink sugar water. Hummingbirds are important pollinators, drinking the nectar of flowering plants through their long beaks. Their tongues have specialized tips that extend to probe deeply into flowering plants, sipping the nectar 20 times per second.

WATCH

(Unmute to listen) The loud hum of male broad-tailed hummingbirds’ wings sounds as they dart in and out of a feeder filled with sugar water. Known as wing trills, the sounds are an important part of the birds’ courtship ritual when combined with diving flying behaviors

Dean has devoted his adult life to covering the Rocky Mountain West, specifically Wyoming and Colorado in photographs and words. Indigenous cultures as well as the cattle, farmland and recreation.  An avid outdoors person he skis, bikes, hikes, paddles and rows. He’s authored three books and besides The Colorado Sun his words and photographs...