An "In Your Face" Hummingbird

[sydnie7]

That's a wonderful experience, Ted. Never had one stay that close to me and your description is fascinating.

We've had a male Anna's take over our backyard and wear himself out guarding three feeders. All the books say spacing feeders will prevent this, but he doesn't seem to care about distance -- has a variety of favorite perches that allow him to keep an eye on all three at once! Needless to say, he gets very unhappy when we take one down for cleaning and refill.

Here he is, perched on one of our eponymous plant sticks

[snip] Made the mix herself. I still remember cleaning up the red in the kitchen.

Just a note here, please please do NOT put red food coloring in your hummer juice! Just 4:1 water:white sugar, let it boil for 15 seconds. The birds will be attracted to the red plastic of feeder, no need to gum up their works with food coloring.

[O'Gallchobhair of Donegal]

Just a note here, please please do NOT put red food coloring in your hummer juice! Just 4:1 water:white sugar, let it boil for 15 seconds. The birds will be attracted to the red plastic of feeder, no need to gum up their works with food coloring.

Ya we figured that part out after 2 or 3 thorough cleanings lol

[Bugbear]

Red hummingbird poop.

I don't know which kind of hummingbird this guy was, sydnie7. There's been a few back there, and I'm assuming this one is claiming the two trees I was sitting under; they're more like giant bushes. I haven't been dive bombed by hummers for a few months.

The citrus blooms are slowing down at this time of year, but I have a whole bunch of wild flowers, and also grow red hibiscus as a crop along with several other flowers on through the summer. Several of the properties around me have citrus and assorted flowering plants. Add to that, the desert shrubs and cacti, and it's like a smorgasbord of smorgasbords out there.

Thinking about it, part of the feeling was a little like having a cat pur in your ear...

[Livingston]

My parents live in a 1914 log home in Estes Park, CO. They have been feeding them there for years. One year we were out on the front porch with the broadtails and rofus flying around. I was standing about 2 ft from the feeder. With so many coming in to feed I decided to slowly reach up and pet one. It took a while but I did VERY gently slid one finger across the back of a broadtail that stopped at the feeder.

Last summer we were at a history/natural history talk at the Bald Pate Inn just outside of Estes. The talk was on hummingbirds. He was trapping and banding birds as he talked. When he was finished with each one he would have one of the ladies hold out her hand. He would lay the bird on its back on her hand and walk away. The bird would lay there until he came back and tapped the back of her hand just hard enough to move the bird and it would realize that it could fly off. Joyce commented on how light it was and the looks on their faces as they held them was special.

[Bugbear]

Oh! That's interesting, I didn't think of touching him; I went right into "don't react" mode. That might explain why I was so aware of the effect he was having on my nervous system.

That's a neat story, Livingston, and I very much remember camping in Estes Park when I was a kid.

[sydnie7]

We have large plate glass windows onto the garden. Despite numerous Audubon Society "bird protection" decals, we get the odd hummer flying full bore into the glass. Typically they fall to the ground for a few minutes, then wake up and fly away. Sometimes I'll pick them up and put them in the sun, or on a chilly morning I'll hold them in the sun in cupped hands until they revive. They weigh nothing, and when they roll over and start staggering around on your palm, their little feet are just pinpricks on your skin. Very special experience!

Years ago I was able to free an English sparrow that had been stealing fibers from our front door mat, but got one foot tangled in the threads. She kept trying to fly away, then falling when she hit the end of the leash. When I walked up, she went totally still and I was able to enfold her in one hand and tease her foot free with the other. Walked a few steps away, then opened my hand. It took her a moment to realize she was free, and take off. By comparison to a hummer, she was a huge and heavy bird!

[Kiltboy]

A family friend runs a cabin/campground in the mountains of NW Arkansas. She fills her multiple hummingbird feeders with a home-made sugary recipe (no red dye of course) every morning. Up to 5 quarts a day. (!) Being "buzzed" while refilling is part of the fun, she says. She watches them line up in nearby trees and wait thier turn to feed. And, if someone takes too much time feeding, watch out. Fights are quite common, violent, and very fast. Don't blink.

[Old Hippie]

And then they do a mating dance where one of them goes back and forth in front of the other very fast, making a sort of whistle sound with his wings.

Sounds like a Rufous Hummingbird. They have that kind of metallic high-pitched wing sound. We have lots of them now at the farm. We also have the smaller Calliope Hummingbird, which although smaller has a deeper wing sound with no whistling.

Rufous hummers will do this climb-and-dive loop routine for a mating dance, with a little butt-wiggle at the bottom. You get this "WEEEeee--oooo-chee-chee-chee-chee" sound from that, then they'll do that side to side hover and you hear "cheem-cheem-cheem..."

OK, the first person to laugh at my sound effects renditions gets a whack...

:ootd:

[sydnie7]

When my mother lived in SE Wyoming, she kept quart-sized feeders around the house -- the hummers migrate up there for the summer. When the fledglings come off the nest, we would be filling those feeders daily! The babies are so cute, as babies are -- no tails to speak of, and they didn't know about territories and such. They would just crowd in, four or more at a feeder "flower," like bees.

The rufous and broad-tail were the noisy, territorial ones in that range.

[Bugbear]

* I'm going to have to start again on the hummingbirds because the recordings were mixed up; it's my fault. *Ok, I've been listening to recordings of the humming birds that are supposed to be in my area. The wing humm did sound like the recording of an Anna's, but there wasn't a different one to compare it to.

I think I have heard the calls of either the Anna's or the Rubythroated hummingbirds, but I will need to listen several more times to both the recordings and the one's outside.

It seems like I have heard a broadtail out there in the neighbor's mulberry trees, and I will have to pay attention if I hear it again.

There are, what I think to be, several doves that constantly go on, and it gets distracting along with all the other kinds of birds when listening.

There is also that large cawing bird that hangs out in my seventy foot palm tree that I need to identify; he flys around and caws, but I think there is a second one down a few properties. * He sounds a whole lot like the recording of the common Raven,.*