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DOGWOODS AND HUMMINGBIRDS: SURE SIGNS OF SPRING

#36: 9-21 April 2026

"This Week At Hilton Pond North" is an on-going series of original photo essays—posted more or less weekly—about natural history happenings here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of upper Ashe County, North Carolina. If you want a free e-mail reminder about each new installment, click here to SUBSCRIBE.

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Random observations about Blue Ridge Birds & Nature

● Banded in 2026: 25 species, 1,361 individuals

● All-time (2024-26) totals: 70 species, 4,539 individuals

Apple Podcast #36

No tree announces spring in the southern Appalachians quite like Flowering Dogwood, Cornus florida. Here at Hilton Pond North its annual bloom is a welcome event that portends Old Man Winter is done for the year. Contrasted against dark trunks of still-leafless trees, dogwood's brilliant whites brighten the forest understory a few weeks before the canopy starts to fill in. And, just as exciting, dogwood blossoms are a sure sign migrant Ruby-throated Hummingbirds can't be far behind.

By blooming early, Flowering Dogwood plays an essential role supporting pollinators when little else has yet to blossom—even as recently emerged insects are hard-pressed to find nectar or pollen. Dogwood's floral splendor is a beacon to hungry invertebrates, although this striking display isn't actually the tree's flowers. Those four white structures are often incorrectly referred to as "petals" but they're actually "bracts", modified leaves that unfurl to reveal tiny, less conspicuous yellow-green true flowers at center. Our photo above shows these flowers' male stamens and female pistils; once fertilized, an ovary at the base of each pistil gives rise to fall fruit.

Several native pollinators are attracted to dogwood's central flowers, including tiny, easily overlooked halictids (Sweat Bees) and andrenid (Miner Bees), and somewhat larger syrphid flies such as the Transverse-banded Flower Fly, Eristalis transversa (above). Dozens of native insect species that aren't considered pollinators still use Flowering Dogwood as a food source, including aphids, leaf beetles, sawflies, flea beetles, midges, borers, and spittlebugs.

More than 100 species of moths and butterflies are known to use Flowering Dogwood as larval host, in turn making it a keystone resource for insectivorous birds—particularly those that arrive exhausted and starved after a long trip from the Neotropics. These migrants depend almost entirely on caterpillar abundance when they first come back north. Perhaps the most familiar dogwood butterfly whose larvae birds consume is the Spring Azure, Celastrina ladon (artistic rendering, above); its caterpillars feed on the tree's leaves while adults nectar on its blossoms. Among moths, Cecropia Silkmoth, Hyalophora cecropia—the largest of North America's native silk moths—also claims dogwood as a larval host.

Yes, spring gets the headlines but Flowering Dogwood's ecological value runs year-round. By late summer and early fall, the bracts and flowers are long gone and green fruit clusters ripen to a glossy scarlet (above). These are unusually high in fat (35% by dry weight) and among the more nutritious wild fruits for their size. At least 93 species of birds have been documented eating the drupes, including migrating thrushes, Cedar Waxwings, and Northern Flickers moving through on their way south. For them a dogwood loaded with fruit is a fast-food stop at a critical moment. Mammals take their cut as well: Eastern Chipmunks, foxes, skunks, squirrels, and the occasional Black Bear are all documented consumers. All these birds and mammals do dogwoods a big favor as their digestive tracts make use of berry nutrients without damaging seeds distributed shortly thereafter via scat and guano.

Flowering Dogwood drupes are also high in calcium, which brings up a seldom-mentioned aspect of the tree's ecological importance: Dogwood roots mine otherwise inaccessible calcium from deep soil layers and concentrate it in its leaves. Calcium-rich amphibolite rocks of central Ashe County NC are perfect for nurturing dogwoods that, in turn, remove calcium and sequester it in fruit and foliage. In autumn, leaves fall to earth and decompose quickly, cycling calcium into surface soil. There it becomes available to land snails and terrestrial salamanders that otherwise might have trouble finding sufficient dietary calcium in a typically acidic Appalachian landscape.

So what's the deal with calcium, dogwoods, snails, and salamanders? It's  obvious snails need lots of dietary calcium to build shells; in some habitats they get that from calcium-rich vegetation enabled by dogwoods. And even though they're typically thought of as predators on earthworms and other invertebrates, terrestrial caudatans such as Northern Slimy Salamanders, Plethodon glutinosus (above) found in the Blue Ridge are known to consume land snails with regularity. These snails are essentially mobile calcium packets, and female salamanders have elevated physiological demand for calcium when producing eggs. Without dogwoods and their calcium cycling, snails might not exist locally in otherwise acidic soils and salamanders might not reproduce without snails in their diet. All this is just another example of complex interrelationships we strive to understand and write about here at Hilton Pond North as we gaze admiringly each spring at our abundant eye-pleasing Flowering Dogwoods.

Early in the day on 14 April at Hilton Pond North we spotted our first Ruby-throated Hummingbird (RTHU) of 2026—an adult male with metallic red gorget. At dusk in poor light we managed to grab the screen shot above of what we suspect was the same bird. This is four days earlier than our first RTHU sighting last year, but two days later than in 2024—our first year of research here in upper Ashe County. (NOTE: The screen shot came from a livestream of one of our ever-popular Nature & Feeder Cams, available for view by clicking on the link at the end of this section.)

Male Indigo Buntings (INBU) with bright cobalt-blue plumage arrive here at Hilton Pond North beginning in late April and a week or so ahead of females with their much drabber solid-brown plumage. This week's capture was a second-year male (above)—confirmed because of a few brown feathers scattered among the blue. (The bicolored bill is found in both sexes but is especially prominent in adult males.) Males waste no time establishing song posts at forest edges, shrubby clearings, power line cuts, and woodland borders, singing loudly from a tall exposed perch. They sing well into summer, long after spring warblers have gone quiet.

INBU are granivorous during most of the year but shift heavily toward invertebrates during breeding season, offering nestlings a diet rich in caterpillars and other arthropods. (NOTE: Just because a bird has a cone-shaped bill doesn’t mean it eats ONLY seeds.)

Indigo Buntings are long-distance migrants, ending up mostly in southern Mexico, Central America, or the Caribbean. Like many songbirds, they use stellar orientation as a primary compass mechanism during migration. This ability isn't hardwired to specific stars; instead, INBU nestlings learn the center of the night sky—the area around Polaris—by watching the pattern of stellar rotation overhead. Whatever point the sky appears to rotate around gets encoded as "north" and sends Indigo  Buntings in the right direction as they make their initial southbound trip. From a conservation standpoint, increased light pollution on bunting breeding grounds doesn't just obscure stars, it likely disrupts the imprinting process in nestlings during that critical window—with effects not showing up until first migration. This is just one reason we're grateful for dark night skies here in upper Ashe County at Hilton Pond North.