humming along

Lately I've been learning how to get pictures of birds, and they've said a good bit about using blinds. Birds alert to movement more than sound, I am told. Because of this, though an odd shaped blind would seem out of place to you and me, they will tolerate it. You can stand quietly behind a one and take pictures.

Well, as you know, I'm not spending lots of money on anything right now, trying to funnel everything toward my last credit card debt and saving for my future plans. So I haven't spent money on getting any upgrades to my camera, and buying some kind of elaborate blind also seemed silly with a camera I don't have lots of skill at using anyway.

That hasn't stopped me from trying to take pictures. Outside my garden gate is a large crape myrtle. I spent the better part of the spring trimming it down this year, and now it looks fabulous, with large blooms dripping off the tree like bunches of pink grapes. I hung a hummingbird feeder here, between a butterfly bush and a honeysuckle tree. It's a minor hummingbird paradise.

Still, they were pretty shy. Until I ran out of the store bought nectar and decided to make my own, just a cup of sugar to a quart of water.

That was the key. They loved it.

Hummingbirds aren't social animals. They do not mate for life. Males do not hang around to help with the kiddies. They are extremely territorial, and will only let females in their territory if the ladies have relations with them. Females aren't as territorial, until they are defending a food resource near a nest. I've seen them buzzing around a particular pine tree branch stretched over my back yard, and I figure there's a nest there. I have three females using in my feeder, but one seems dominant. Not only will she shoo off the other two if they approach when she is trying to feed, she will actually perch in the upper branches of my dead dogwood tree and wait on the other girls, so she can shoo them away as well. One afternoon, I got home and opened my car door to the sound of frantic chatter. As I slowly approached the tree, thinking perhaps a small bird had, at last, been attacked or injured by one of the neighborhood cats, I found all three hummingbirds, hovering at opposing sides of the tree. It was a Mexican standoff around a small feeder of sugar and water.

All this drama, and me, with no pictures! So I parked myself against the trunk of the tree one afternoon, propped my shooting arm in one place, focused it on the tree, and waited. They notice me, but because I'm partly obscured in the branches of the tree, they live with it.

They've nearly run into me numerous times, as they dive bomb each other. If I manage some video of that, I'll post it.

Around here, hummers are mostly gone by October, so I only have another few weeks with my little friends. I would love to see a newly hatched kiddie in that time. All the other birds are going through sunflower seeds like they're eating their last meal, too. And this morning, I think I spotted a new visitor -- tentatively, I think it was a blue-gray gnatcatcher. But like many backyard birders, I have been thoroughly entertained by my little hummers this year, and I feel so fortunate that they found my feeder in its first year.

--Laura