I had some visitors yesterday, they stopped they drank and dined. They graciously thanked me when they flitted off. They were humingbirds.
I was sitting out on my patio, listing to traffic on my amateur radio, reading a kindle book, and creating voluminous clouds of smoke from a fresh Macanudo when I noticed a hummingbird flitting around the empty feeder hanging on edge of my patio roof. He didn’y hang around long. The feeder has been empty for months, I had been meaning to fill it, but it was just one of those task I hadn’t gotten around to yet.
Equality and I had some errands to run, so we left the casa did some shopping, and had lunch in Texas City, not a bad way to spend a rainy stormy Sunday morning. When we got home several hours later. I decided to fill the humming bird feeder. This was, after all, a task that I had put off long enough. I filled the feeder, sat back in my chair turned up the radioset. and relit the big Mac. Within 20 minutes I was rewarded with visit to the feeder by a brave little hummer. I say brave cause after the little fella had drank his fill he came up close to me. Eyeball to eyeball he hovered. Within arms reach. he darted around and took a sip. left for a few minutes and came back and repeated his act. I assume it was the same bird, but I really don’t know. Eventually two birds visited at the same time, and after a while I even had three feeding at once. Every time they came to feed one of them would do the same thing, up to me, within three feet, eye level to eye level look at me and then flyoff.
I don’t know a lot about birds or humming birds in particular. But it seems as though there is something going on in their tiny brains. Did they understand that I put up the feeder for their benefit? Were they trying to thank me? Make friends? I don’t know it just seemed so strange to me.
Hopefully within the next couple of weeks I’ll get some pictures of these guys.
