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Nature Done Wright
Incorporating the Celery Farm and Screech Owl Companion blogs
September 26, 2013
My Latest: Hummingbirds Are Brats!
My latest column for The Record and Herald News takes a cheap shot at hummingbirds, the spoiled brats of the backyard bird world! Outrageous.
Here's a sample:
It’s not just that this aggressive pipsqueak is typically the only Eastern yard bird that insists on its own special feeder, but you also have to keep refilling it regularly with fresh sugar water.
What’s more, if you want to attract a lot of hummingbirds to your yard, you have to put up several feeders, because ruby-throats never learned to share.
As if that weren’t bad enough, now I find out I should leave my hummingbird feeder up for at least two more weeks — even though most ruby-throats have headed south. What a pain.
The link is here.
2 comments
-
So apt, and so timely! Having put a feeder up for the first time ever, and enjoyed the pleasure of these miracles of nature the past few weeks, I was all set to take the feeder down this weekend, not having seen any of these little beaus on it or around the property since Sep 18.
I will now hold on to it for a couple of weeks more, just in the off-chance we end up with a straggler, and get one more chance to delight in them this season!
Incidentally, of the few hundred sightings we have had of hummingbirds this season, we saw only bird with the ruby throat. Are the adult male birds that rare, or was it just us?
Thanks Jim for another great post. -
Perfectly written, funny article this am in the Record. We loved it. We feel your pain…made the hummingbird mix in batches this summer by the 1/2 gallon and stored it in refrig. Just made ‘one more feeder full’ last week for the heck of it. We have a straggler…woo-hoo. Now we are saying, “When the heck is he going to leave so we can take it down before the leaves all fall to the ground?
thanks for brightening this rather dreary day.
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2 comments
Ravi Potluri
So apt, and so timely! Having put a feeder up for the first time ever, and enjoyed the pleasure of these miracles of nature the past few weeks, I was all set to take the feeder down this weekend, not having seen any of these little beaus on it or around the property since Sep 18.
I will now hold on to it for a couple of weeks more, just in the off-chance we end up with a straggler, and get one more chance to delight in them this season!
Incidentally, of the few hundred sightings we have had of hummingbirds this season, we saw only bird with the ruby throat. Are the adult male birds that rare, or was it just us?
Thanks Jim for another great post.
sally t.
Perfectly written, funny article this am in the Record. We loved it. We feel your pain…made the hummingbird mix in batches this summer by the 1/2 gallon and stored it in refrig. Just made ‘one more feeder full’ last week for the heck of it. We have a straggler…woo-hoo. Now we are saying, “When the heck is he going to leave so we can take it down before the leaves all fall to the ground?
thanks for brightening this rather dreary day.