Tag Archives: hummingbird

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Chew on this

No, hummingbirds don’t chew as far as I know, but they sure are tough. I had an Anna’s hummingbird that would overwinter in Port Townsend, surviving even when it was snowing and got down to 17 degrees. The food would freeze and I would have this small fierce creature swooping over my head making a ticking sound to remind me to thaw the food out.

My daughter and friend started over the mountains last night but holed up in a motel partway. They said that the roads weren’t that awful but the lack of visibility was exhausting. It is hard to see where the road is in the teeth of the storm! I am glad they are safe and we will see what happens today!

I learned to take the food in at night, so it would be all ready in the morning.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: chew. (Choo choo! I wonder if the train is getting through!)

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Bonfire metabolism

We are having our first real cold snap, with snow and lots of accidents two evenings ago. We have Anna’s hummingbirds, who can over winter. By yesterday morning, the temperature had dropped to 17 degrees F. Both of my hummingbird feeders were frozen.

I went out to wrap a hot towel around one. The front-of-the-house Anna’s buzzed me, inches from my face, to let me know she is HUNGRY and the food IS NOT AVAILABLE. The hot towel didn’t work, so I took the feeder in for a bit. She didn’t like that at all.

This looks pretty silly, but success!

The tiny feeder is one to hold in my hand. I have three, so I rotated them during the day to keep thawed food. Anna Front still spent energy chasing other hummingbirds away. She doesn’t look too upset, does she?

Anna’s hummingbird guarding her feeder and grooming in a rhododendron

The photos and video were taken through my window from my desk.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bonfire.

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Summer fools

Some fools are summer fools
other fools are sommerfugls
fugls are birds, yes, summer birds
but summer birds are butterflies
I don’t think butterflies can hum
but hummingbirds can hum and fly
flies and birds and soon it’s fall
the summer fools fool us all

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: hum.

Sommerfugl is Danish and is pronounced summer fool. The literal translation is summer bird, but it means butterfly.

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Hopes rise

Our Christmas plans are busily crashing and burning. I felt ill and tested covid positive two days before my daughter was due from her city. ALERT, ALERT, DIVERT! I called friends who agreed to pick her up at the airport and let her stay for the five days of isolation. I stay out of the car so the germs will die. I call her after her work on Friday. She takes it calmly and calls a friend to pick her up. I miss her, darn it, but well, I am not on a ventilator or dead. Doing well, right?

She stays with her friend. She plans to join me yesterday but then snow. School is canceled. She and her friend sensibly leave my car at the entrance to the ridge road the friend lives on. She has to use the chains anyhow because someone has slithered off the road right in front of my car. Still grateful, because they did not hit my car.

She makes it to my house, chains on. She heads downtown to Christmas shop but the store she wants is closed. I ordered her a present that needs to be picked up, but the pick up is Tuesday to Saturday. They don’t list a phone. I ordered it on Sunday and they had emailed “Pick up now” even though it’s not “open” on Sunday. I email back, “Can’t, covid!” Now I email again and say would they contact my daughter or me so she can pick up. They do, but well after she is home. Still grateful, because they are open today. Maybe we’ll get it!

My daughter has been looking forward to time with friends but the snow has screwed this up. Maybe to time with mom, too, but mom has Covid. I am eating upstairs, she is eating in the basement, and same with sleeping. We are both masking and everyone is sick of that. It’s cold outside and the band she wants to dance to cancels. She misses meeting a friend downtown because of chains and needing gasoline. I am still grateful. Not dead yet, right?

Now I have email from our flight saying, well, maybe we’ll go. We are supposed to fly later this week. It looks like the big storm will hit Chicago and Buffalo and Boston. Cross fingers as we head for Dulles. Might make it. We discuss going to Sea-Tac a day early but that would mean sleeping in the same hotel room and no, we aren’t going to do that. Friends say they CAN get us to the airport. Super grateful for those friends!

When things are going all awry and life seems like rather a mess, we do Happy Things. That is a check in at the end of the day where we list three Happy Things each. My son was having a miserable half way through the year first grade move when we started this. The thing is, they do not have to be VERY happy. They can be more along the lines of “No one has poured boiling oil over me today.” or “Not dead yet.” It’s complaining reframed and it can be very very funny. In first grade one of his Happy Things was “We did not have the pizza that tastes like cardboard for school lunch today.”

So my Happy Things yesterday were: “I am not on a ventilator! I am not dead! We have super nice friends who will take us two hours to the airport!” If you start low enough on the Happy Things scale, there is no where to go but up.

And a Happy Thing for today: “I think the sun will rise!”

Happy Solstice.

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The photograph is Emerald, one of the Anna’s Hummingbirds, all fluffed up in the cold and guarding her feeder. There is a bird photobombing the background. I think it is a song sparrow but it was very early and the light is not great.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: rise.

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Thaw

This is Tiktok. In 2019 he overwintered at my house. We had snow and it got very cold at night and I worried. But every morning, he’d appear near the feeder when it got light. Then he would throw a mild conniption at me when I went outside with a hot towel to try to thaw the feeder. “Hurry up, hurry up, I am hungry!” He certainly figured out that I was the person who dealt with the feeder. He would buzz me if the feeder was empty, too. He makes a ticking sound, so that’s where the name is from. One of those old things called clocks, with hands, that ticked.

Right now I have two feeders up. I am seeing a female Anna’s hummingbird in the front, chasing others away, and a male at the kitchen feeder. It may be Tiktok still! I have named the female Emerald. I have seen them together in the top of the plum tree, but this is after Emerald chased Tiktok away from her feeder. It’s a bit unclear if they are friends or not.

Meanwhile, Elwha has the opposite of a conniption.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: conniption.

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Feed the birds

I fill the bird feeder, a day late, because I had to go buy more birdseed. I also buy suet and fill that feeder. I walk both cats, harness and leash, one at a time. I put both of them in the outdoor screened animal container and they crouch, riveted watching the birdfeeder. I put four peanuts along the top of the fence.

I hold a fifth peanut in my hand over my head and wait. It starts snowing, just a little.

The flock of goldfinches, in their winter more subtle coloring, shows up. I count nine. The feeder can hold 6 at a time. They ignore my hand. A stellar jay comes by, but stays high in the tree. Chickadees pop in between the goldfinches. They are rounder and a little bigger and talk to me. No one comes to my hand. Juncos come to the ground beneath the feeder. The cats would REALLY like to catch them.

And then a bird does come. A hummingbird comes to my hand and hovers right by it! It does not land. It doesn’t like the peanut. It then goes and buzzes the glass, where I used to have a hummingbird feeder up, until the ants find it.

I laugh and get the other hummingbird feeder. I make food and wait for it to cool. I fill both feeders. The Anna’s hummingbird finds it within 15 minutes and eats a lot. The other feeder is on a different window, right outside my desk window. It is soon occupied by a second hummingbird.

I hope to have more photographs soon.

I took this out my desk window yesterday.

There is avian influenza around. I have two feeders and wash one very thoroughly in hot water and soap each time. I change the feeder out every time, to try to reduce the chance of the feeder passing on infection. And wash my hands very well too.

Though it’s rather more than tuppence a bag!

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Frosted

Ok, it’s not frost, is it? It’s snow.

I went out each morning to get the frozen feeder and wrap a hot towel around it until TicTok could drink. TicTok would yell at me if I didn’t fix it as soon as it was light.

The Anna’s hummingbirds can overwinter here. It got well below freezing. They can slow their metabolism and do an overnight mini-hibernation. They are hungry as bears when they wake up!

Taken in 2019.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: frost.

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Feathers

This is the final poem in my Falling Angels Dream Poetry series.

Some people say there are

Angels among us

I have faith in birds
I search for a nest
Hummingbird nest
the size of a nut
tiny, lined with spiderwebs
I love the herons too
great blue heron
flying lands in a tree
above me
I look through my mechanical eye
zoom in click click
and there is another
at the tree top
two in a tree
I move around
and there – one drops down
one flies
I am not distracted
a nest
a six foot nest
blessed
I move away gently

I wander back by the tree
gently
in the morning
in the evening
not one
not two
two in this tree
two in that
one in another
as many as five in a tree
six foot wing spans
a rookery of winged beings

angels among us
and why would we think
they would look like us?