Thursday, August 02, 2007

Little crazy birds


I have always liked seeing hummingbirds around a yard. They are so small and fast and entertaining to watch. For several years I have had a hummingbird feeder hanging from the patio cover so I can watch the birds from the kitchen. This year I put another feeder on the north side of the cover. It is interesting to see how the birds react and feed. There is usually a bird guarding the south feeder; he scares away other hummers who try to feed at HIS feeder. He will sit on the wire of the string of lights near his feeder then dive bomb other hummers who approach his feeder. The north feeder gets hummers who seem to get along most of the time and will feed 2 to 4 at a time. Each feeder has room for 4 hummers to feed at a time. I had seen 3 at a time before but this week I FINALLY saw 4 feeding at the same time. (Little things in life bring such joy, don't they?) A few evenings ago I was sitting still out on the patio watching the hummers; there were at least 8 of them in the air around the north feeder. I think the babies must be loose now to feed on their own. Or else the word has gotten out to the hummer community about the abundance of food at Gramma Jayne's patio. I refill the north feeder every 2 or 3 days now with 16 oz of sugar water! They are hungry little buggers. The south feeder that is guarded by "Goliath" as I call him, gets refilled less often because Goliath won't share! When family or friends come over and are on the patio, some of them get scared when the hummers dive-bomb each other. The noise they make is so loud! The hummers will get near us and dive over our heads or around us, but they never touch us .... yet. Maybe one day one of us will end up in ER with puncture wounds from a pissed off hummingbird attack. I just hope they don't hit me in the right hip area. That'd hurt, and then the Kelly hummingbird dining room would slam shut forever!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Fill the hummer feeders... that has been on my to-do list all summer!! However, I did (unwittingly) produce a huge hollyhock plant outside our front window, & they have had a blast flitting and filling their little bellies with nature's sugar water. The HH finally got so tall (above the roof line) it fell over; I bungee-corded it back in place and gave the lil' birds a few more weeks of goodies. Maybe now I'll make some sugar water.