Hummingbirds

I wrote the following on a rainy day at Fortress Lake last week...

I can do it for hours, days on end. Every year it fascinates me. In fact, my favourite part of Fortress Lake Retreat is simply watching the hummingbirds zipping around. When we first put the feeders up upon arrival each spring, the leaves aren’t out on the trees and the bright red feeders stand out like giant T-Bones to a Rottweiler. They get attention.

There’s some really neat habits on show at the feeder. There is always one mean ass male that rules the roost. He’ll sit beside a feeder and keep tabs on his food. You have to realize that each feeder has a litre of sugar water, so a feeder is about 3 weeks of feed for him. He could share. But, no, it doesn’t work that way. It’s his feeder, done deal. Any time another hummer comes along – squeaky squawk and he’s on it and chases it away. At the start of the year when 6 or 7 hummers come at once, the dominant male is a light sabre like show, flying through the willows like an Ewok on those cruisers.

Eventually things settle out and it’s time to get horny. The males fly in their J-curve, peaking about 80 feet up and come straight down, arching just above the vegetation and levelling out horizontally, putting the brakes on and chirping three or four times while fanning their tail feathers. From there, it follows that route back up to the peak, and it follows the sequence two more times before going for a drink at the feeder, then to the perch to chill, waiting for baby’s momma to come along.

The females tend to lay low in the bushes, likely fearful for their tail feathers. They hang along the two bottom branches, just off the ground in the willows. They wait until there is no obvious noise or presence of the males before rising to the feeder. And naturally, Billy Joe has simply been resting on the nearest branch and comes to say hi to the female. She tries to get a little feed, but most often the male chases her into the willows and tries to play ‘tag’ with her little tail feathers.

To really impress the ladies, the males can get so aggressive when chasing the gals through the willows that the female stops on a branch. The male then pulses on horizontal plane in and out. It’s kind of eerily like the pelvic thrust that my grade 10 Chemistry teacher Mr Peet used to do in class, but I think the male hummingbird’s intent is a little different. But Mr. Peet was an odd duck, so who knows. While giving the gals the pelvic thrust show, the males humm to the rhythm. Amelia should only be so lucky. I assume the lucky dudes shake the female’s tail feathers in the bushes soon after this.

Otherwise, the hummers simply fly about, crash into the odd window, I resuscitate them, and they fly out of my hands. If we leave the yurt doors open, they fly in to check things out, and then spook up to the dome at the top of the yurt. And it’s way too hot for a little hummer in the dome, so I get the dome opener and open it until there’s a small opening. Then it’s Rescue 911 as I get a broom to try to nudge it towards the opening. Sometimes it will simply look at the broom as a good roost, and I lower the broom down with the bird sitting neatly. We look at each other and I’ll walk him out the front door. Every single one flies over to the feeder.

We position our chairs between the feeders to give a little spice to conversation. At the peak of hummingbird season the racetrack between the feeders has birds zipping past at 30 mph over our shoulders or just over our hats.

It’s really cool.