>> long & late blooming plants
One of my coolest nature observations that I pieced together on my own was the relationship between alders and other sweet sap trees, sapsuckers and hummingbirds.
Over the course of several days in a fen I watched the red-breasted sapsucker make the tour of its trees. As soon as it left, the hummingbirds would follow and get the leftover sap the bigger bird had missed. So then I went into the library for some researchers
Scientists still don't know how sapsuckers keep the sap flowing. They have tried to make identical holes and they always coagulate. One theory is that their saliva has an anti-coagulant. The upshot is that the sap continues to flow and they will have a set of trees that they visit, letting the sap build up as they go around their circuit.
Hummingbirds know this. If they are feeding and sapsucker shows up, they will clear out to let the sapsucker do its work. If another bird shows up, they will often mob that bird (hummingbirds can be pretty agressive).
The cool thing about this is that the alder or lilac or deerbrush trees that the sapsucker needs are available for a super long season, so as long as the supsucker is there, it means that the hummingbirds can come "early" and not die of starvation and still be there for when the scarlet monkeyflowers or fushcia or other favorites bloom.
