It's mid-April, and right on cue one of Georgia's most beloved birds, the ruby-throated hummingbird, is showing up at feeders throughout the state.

"My first-of-the-season hummer flew up in front of me as though to say, 'I'm back,' " wrote Donna Seckinger of Villa Rica on the birders' chat line last week. "Happy day! I have been very anxious for that first sighting."

Andy Sharp / AJC (ENLARGE)

Luminous drifts of dogwood blooms are turning the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge near Juliette into a wonderland.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (ENLARGE)

This pencil depiction of hooded mergansers won 17-year-old Soo Kim the Georgia Junior Duck Stamp Art contest.

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If you haven't done so already, clean your feeders, fill them with nectar (four parts water to one part sugar) and hang them. The little birds should have hearty appetites after flying from winter homes in Mexico and Central America. Many of them may have traveled more than 500 miles over the Gulf of Mexico and hundreds of miles more inland to reach Georgia.

Following their long, grueling migration, the tiny birds must consume about half their weight in food every day. A ruby-throat's typical body weight is about 3.4 grams. (A nickel weighs 5 grams.) To meet the demand, hummingbirds must feed frequently on high-energy foods such as nectar and tree sap that collects in holes made by yellow-bellied sapsuckers in hardwood trees. Hummingbirds also obtain protein by eating tiny spiders and small soft-bodied insects.

Hummingbirds, of course, also favor nectar-rich flowers, including coral honeysuckle, columbine, bee balm and other native plants. Folks who seem to have the greatest success in attracting hummingbirds combine the use of feeders with planting nectar-loaded flowers, say Department of Natural Resources biologists. A bonus in planting such flowers is that you also likely will enjoy an abundance of butterflies.

Bloom report

Thousands of blooming white dogwoods last weekend in the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge near Juliette in Middle Georgia made it difficult for me to imagine a more beautiful place in Georgia. I drove the Little Rock Wildlife Drive through the refuge and saw so many dogwoods in bloom that the woods looked like a snowy wonderland — as if a spring blizzard had swept the area. The dogwoods should still be blooming this weekend.

I had stopped at the refuge while driving back from Statesboro for the Georgia Botanical Society's annual wildflower pilgrimage, which offered several field trips. On one outing, we visited some bogs — brimming with water from heavy rains — in some power line rights-of-way in Evans County. There we marveled over colonies of two carnivorous pitcher plant species in full bloom. Our leaders, Hew and Martha Joiner of Statesboro, said it has been a difficult task trying to protect fragile bog plants from inconsiderate ATV riders, who drive their machines through the bogs and rip up the plants. Pitcher plants and several other bog species are becoming scarcer in Georgia because of habitat loss, herbicide misuse and other threats.

Another field trip took us to the Nature Conservancy's 73-acre Charles Harrold Preserve in Candler County, which includes two distinct habitats — an alluvial swamp and a sandhill community dominated by wire grass, scrub oaks and longleaf pines. We found more than two dozen species in glorious bloom, including the piedmont azalea (pink); black titi (white); pencil flower (yellow); blue star; and dog hobble (white). As we walked under a wild crab apple tree in magnificent bloom, our leader, naturalist Malcolm Hodges, tugged on a low-hanging branch. A cascade of pinkish-white petals descended on us, like gently falling snow.

Student artists

A beautiful color-pencil drawing of a pair of hooded merganser ducks by Soo Kim, 17, of Lawrenceville is the winner in this year's Georgia Junior Duck Stamp Art Contest, held by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's regional office in Atlanta. I was one of five judges who selected Kim's drawing as "Best in Show" from among 591 entries from public and private schools, home schools, art studios and after-school programs throughout Georgia. Kim's entry was submitted through Catherine Vatalaro of Collins Hill High School in Suwanee.

Each of the young artists had to research and depict on paper a duck, goose or other waterfowl species native to North America. "The students' artwork is simply phenomenal and inspiring," said contest coordinator Resee Collins.

The contest, she said, motivates young people to get outside, observe waterfowl in natural habitats and learn about the importance of conservation — major goals of the Fish and Wildlife Service. (The hooded merganser depicted by Kim is a common winter resident on the Georgia coast.)

Kim's drawing will compete in the national Junior Duck Stamp contest on Thursday at the San Diego Zoo. The national winner's artwork will be made into a $5 stamp that will be sold by the U.S. Postal Service and Amplex Corp. Proceeds will be used for conservation education.

In the sky

The moon was in first quarter over the weekend. Look for it high in the south at sunset, says Fernbank Science Center astronomer David Dundee. Venus is very low in the west at dusk. Mars is in the southwest just after dark. Jupiter rises out of the east about an hour after midnight. Saturn is high in the south as the sky darkens and will appear near the moon Tuesday night.