Hummer Wars
I mentioned the other day that I was having trouble getting people to work on the house. I still am, but I made progress on one front: a roofer will be here tomorrow to replace the shingles around the vent pipe that was snapped off by snow over the winter. For some reason, people who come to the house always ask how long we've been here, and where we're from. (Prejudice?) Then they say where they're from. The roofer? From California. 
The nuthatches and tree swallows seem to have abandoned their nesting boxes. I think their fledglings flew the coop, and now they've moved on.
The hummingbirds, on the other hand (what was on the first hand?), are having a field day with our feeders. The temperature here has been in the 90's (but it's a dry heat), and the hummers have been hitting the sauce both back and front. They're territorial. A hummer will claim a feeder, and will sit in a nearby tree to guard it. When a marauder flies in to drink from his feeder, the hummer will zoom screeching out of the tree to drive the interloper away from the feeder. Amusingly, while the defender is driving off the marauder, a third hummer will zip in and sip at the feeder.
Why can't we all just get along?
Blog Tag: Chatter
Posted 7/19/2006 11:53:00 PM
L
On 7/20/2006 2:30 PM, 
Candace said...
On 7/21/2006 12:47 PM, dkgoodman said...
2 Comments:
We're having similar hummer wars over here in spite of the numerous feeders available.
You would think that they could share . . . but nooooo! On more than one occasion they've even targeted me.
"Hey, guys! I'm the one who maintains your feeders! Remember!"
We have at least three different varieties buzzing around the house. I've been too busy to identify them, but I know the differences by sight based on color, size, height and beak attributes.
Unfortunately, the finches keep rocking the feeders so that they can get at the sweet liquid, too. One was even attempting to drink through the protective bee caps today.
::mutter::
Of course, the finches are all gluttons. They're bird seed vacuum cleaners. They can go through 20 pounds of seed in about 3 days.
::mutter::
The mourning doves and the squirrels pick up the leftovers. I have upside down soda bottles, which are cut in half and rest over the bird feeders on the hangers, so that the squirrels can't get at them. This keeps the squirrels either foraging on the ground or eating pumpkin seeds from the squirrel feeder.
Animals . . .
Sometimes it's a love/frustration relationship.
I think that the thousands of years of evolution that instilled in hummers the notion that flowers have a limited amount of nectar has yet to be overcome by the presence of feeders with more "nectar" than can be sipped at one session. :)
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