Hummingbird at jewelweed
Archilochus colubris
Ruby-throated Hummingbird · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 31 August 2025
A Ruby-throated Hummingbird hovering into a stand of jewelweed at the Botanic Garden at the end of August, wings a full blur, on its way south. Jewelweed grows in damp shade across the eastern woods, and it is one of the hummingbird's staple flowers on the migration to Central America.
The orange, spotted, spurred flowers are also called spotted touch-me-not, for seed pods that snap open and fling their seeds at the slightest touch once ripe. The two have shaped each other: the flower's spur is exactly the length of the bird's bill.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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