Hummingbirds MIA at the Bird Feeder

About a month ago, I had hummingbirds crowding around the feeder, every perch taken.  They were mostly Black Chinned hummingbirds, our most common resident in the Hill Country of Texas, and some Ruby Throated ones that were probably on their way north.  Then it settled down to what I would say were two to three pairs of Black Chinned who appeared to be the ones choosing to stay.   

For the next few weeks, I was treated to those grand displays of the male, swooping up and down in front of his beloved, wowing her with his aerial capabilities, and wowing me too. It is like that ride at the fair where you swing in a half arc higher and higher; grand to see.

Now, however, in mid-May, all is quiet on the Western front.  Hardly any hummers are coming to the feeder, and even the Golden Fronted woodpeckers who seem to follow every meal of grubs with a sugary dessert, are hardly coming. 

 The reason for the abandonment- is my nectar not good enough; do the neighbors add more sugar to theirs?  Has there been some cataclysmic event in the life of the hummingbirds?  I think not.  My best guess is they are sitting on eggs and parenthood is a 24/7 affair that probably means fewer trips to the feeder. 

My chickadees on the Cape that were such a constant at the feeder, would disappear during nesting time too, only to return with multiple more chickadees in tow to learn the ways of taking a seed one at a time.

My theory is, if you keep a careful watch of who is coming and who ISN’T coming to your feeders, you can get a better sense of when nesting is happening for the different birds in your yard.

So, I am pretty sure the few pairs that were here have built nests, and are busy incubating the two eggs as we speak.   Even though I am scanning the trees with my binoculars, it seems unlikely I will find the nest.  Was there ever a better-camouflaged nest than a hummingbirds?  Made of soft plant down, feathers and other comfy materials, then held together by stronger- than-steel, spider webs, that, and how cool is this, have the elasticity that allows it to expand as the babies grow. 

 Top it all off with bits of lichen and bark attached to the outside, then knowing it is only about as big as a walnut; good luck finding it!  Luckily, someone has, so I can include a picture here.

So, no need to call out the Guard to find my missing hummers; leave them alone and they will come home, bringing their babes behind them.  That’s the hope anyways.  Watch for you own MIA’s and let me know what’s happening in your yard. 

The lower part of my yard is a war zone, but that is another story. Mockingbird territorial wars, coming soon to a blog site near you.

Comparing Regional Glitches

We have moved 12 times, an Army life; different states, sometimes different countries and after all this travel, I can tell you there is something good about everywhere, and often, less advertised, something bad.  The bad part is often downplayed.  When we were stationed at Ft Drum near Watertown NY, a place that routinely got about 12 feet of snow each winter, the forecast never called for a blizzard, or extremely heavy snow, something that the DC area was ready to announce if 5” of snow were in the forecast.  Rather, we were often expecting “snow showers”- showers that typically clocked in at 4’ a throw.  By midwinter, you couldn’t see out the first floor windows.  A hobbit-like, lump of a snowdrift was what the house became.. I loved it!  Others, all those Southerners the Army seemed to delight in sending there were ready to shoot their refrigerators.

When we lived in Albuquerque the weather was often forecasted to be “breezy”, code for, put weight belts on the kids or they will blow away during recess. Even the Cape, which was my closest thing to Paradise Lost, had ticks and mold in the summer, (for those of us without AC and a husband reluctant to turn on fans). 

 

 And now, here I am in Texas, proclaimed by every Texan I have every known, to be “Heaven on Earth”, “God’s country”, etc. etc.  The weathermen love to say, “We are in for a beautiful day” and then proceed to tell me that “beautiful day” will feature temps in the high 90’s.

Spring on the Cape would see me with Scotch tape in hand, picking ticks off the dog and then sealing them in tape, getting about 15 off each morning before I went to work.  This morning, I spent an hour cutting burs out of his coat.

TX has to be the “Burr capital of the world”, something never mentioned in the brochures.  My yard is a sea of Burr clover, so green in the spring that I am loathe to pull it up, and isn’t clover great at recharging the soil with nitrogen?  But when each plant produces hundreds of hundreds of burrs that all attach to my dog, my socks, etc., it is less appreciated.  Yesterday I pulled a wheelbarrow full of “stick tights” out before they reached seed stage and Malta Star thistle likes to come back 2 fold for each one I pull.  And they hurt quite a bit. But not as bad as Buffalo burr that not only pricks but also must add a dose of something else so you feel like you have been stung by something.  “God’s country”, hmmmm.

I have my first chigger bite of the season, nothing that “Chiggar rid” or “Sting Eze” can really alleviate.  And you never see it coming, where was the chigger, could I have brushed it off?  No, because it must wear some invisibility cloak, you only know it got you hours after it gets you.  Days and nights of itching ensue.   The Fire ant bites I had the misfortune of getting last week, are just now subsiding.  My “stealth mosquitoes” are back, amazingly small, making no mosquito whining sound so you never see them coming, and apparently able to go through their 4 stages of development in a nanosecond. No rain, but here they are, my watering perhaps provided a puddle on a leaf and they somehow managed to multiply there.

But then, nowhere is perfect.  Even Hawaii has the off chance of you getting taken out by undertows or a pesky volcano making a mess of things. As a Yeah God person I have a feeling “Heaven on Earth” is a bit of a misnomer, Heaven in heaven is probably the only place that description fits.

 OK, enough ranting, back to burr picking.  May your May be less prickly and itchy than mine is.

Name that Tune

It’s my third spring here in TX and you would think I wouldn’t be so easily fooled by a bird’s song, but once again, a tune made me turn my head and think, “Ah, we DO have Song Sparrows here after all.”  But no, it was the Bewick’s Wren's song I heard, and if I could translate, it might have been saying, “Gotch ya!”, for this isn't the first time it fooled me.   It is one of the first ones signing each morning, and like the Song sparrow, it seems to think, if a tune is catchy enough to sing once, why not sing it a hundred times?

I used to love to listen to “my” Song Sparrow and try to compare it to others I heard.  If I had spare time, I could really do the same with the Bewick’s wren, for both birds need to learn their song, rather than have it ready-made as an instinctual call.  And interestingly, at least with the Bewick’s wren, the young male is copying, not the song of his dear old Dad, but that of the rival male who scolds from the other side of the territorial line.  Hard not to draw a comparison with youth who think their parents know nothing, but will listen readily to others.

The repetitive singing is what reminds me of the Song Sparrow but the comparison ends there, for the wren is one, packed-with-energy, bird.  Like most wrens, it is always flitting from branch to branch, pumping or wagging its upturned tail, doing knee bends and singing; in spring, constantly singing. You will hear him from every corner of your yard as he claims it all as his own. The Song Sparrow however,  seems more content to choose his tree top and just sing over and over from there.  

 I have at least a couple of male Bewick's in my yard for I hear the males ratcheting up their singing competitions, the dueling banjo’s of the wren's territorial world.  According to those who claim to know these things, the female is listening to see which one has truly learned the song and can mimic its tutor to a T.  How she knows who that tutor was and what it sounded like, they don’t say, but clearly it is the song that gets the girl.

 

Along with being one hyper little guy, you could be tempted to say it suffers from OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), for you can watch it wipe its bill, as many birds do, on the branch after it eats an especially juicy larva.  Although I have seen it wipe its bill several times, the Cornell people claim it can do it up to 100 times!  Perhaps a “clean bill” of health is another thing the female is looking for. 

Had this been hundreds of years ago, my East Coast friends would also be familiar with the Bewick’s wren from their own yard, for they used to be found throughout the country.  However, they have since disappeared from east of the Mississippi and the culprit considered most responsible for their demise is the House Wren.  

 Perky and cute too,  they like the same sort of nesting site as the Bewicks and think nothing of claiming it as their own; kicking out eggs, fledglings etc .  Like the starlings that oust the Bluebirds it seems being too demure isn’t a good thing for your long term prospects when there are a shortage of nesting sites.  

I am lucky to have Carolina wrens in the yard also, lots of “teakettle tea” going on this time of year and lots of  answering “churrrrs” from the female.  I know I have told you before that they mate for life, and the attitude behind the “churrr” strikes me as a complaint of a wife that has heard one “teakettle teas”  too many.  The other day I got a good verbal lashing from a female Carolina for, while filling my bird feeder, I must have stumbled on her nest site.  I didn't actually see the nest, but she burst out of a bush and upbraided me with such vociferous churrs and scolding  that I felt thoroughly chastised!  It was an effective deterrent for I haven't dared  go look more carefully for the nest for fear of another verbal assault.   

So, perhaps the third time is the charm, and I will no longer be fooled by a tune that sounds like an old friend, but really belongs to a new one.  Enjoy the songs you hear, for no matter where you live, the dawn chorus is filling the airwaves and trying to figure out who the singers are is a great way to start the day.