Several years ago we went to the Hummingbird Festival/Weekend that falls on or around the last weekend in July at the Land Between the Lakes Nature Station near us in western Kentucky and were so fascinated by the little critters we immediately came back home and got a feeder to hang on our front porch. Since we’d never actually seen any hummingbirds around our house – it’s not so much a matter of having binoculars as being fast enough to focus them in the right place at the right time, you know 😉 – we didn’t have much expectation of any appearing. Imagine our surprise when we were immediately greeted by several of them, literally within hours if not minutes.
Chirping, chattering, buzzing, territorial, extremely addictive-to-watch finger-size avians.
We now have three feeders, two on the front porch and one on the back of our side deck. And the hummingbirds get cranky if the feeders aren’t out and filled the day they begin scouting in the spring and kept filled all summer until they leave in the fall. I swear, unlike other birds, these bossy little bits will come right up to the window and look you in the eye, hovering there until they have your attention with a look that silently, and sometimes not so silently, screams. “Hey, where’s the nectar, bud? ”
Afraid of humans? Not so much.
But you know the oddest and possibly most interesting thing I’ve noticed about them? They take breaks. Lots and lots of breaks. People talk about their high metabolism all the time but never about them simply chilling out around the feeder and shooting the breeze with each other. Which they do. Well, sure, their breaks may only be a minute or two out of a cycle of ten minutes of phenomenal acrobatics while flying around looking for high octane food sources, but they do stop and pause at the feeders and on branches of trees if you know where to look. All the time. I haven’t noticed many other birds doing that. In fact, we’ve learned to get feeders with perches just so they’ll stop and sit for a while and thus we can get better looks at them. Difficult to do when they’re buzzing by in a blur otherwise.
So, life lesson to remember the next time you’re running around and meeting yourself coming and going – even hummingbirds take breaks. If they can do it, we can do it, too. 😀