These little suckers are hard to photograph!


We’ve been watching the hummingbirds lately. I know many of you have hummingbirds at your feeders; probably dozens and dozens of them. But they’re new to us. We had some in Minnesota, but getting them to come to our feeder here has been a bit of a challenge. It could be because we have three indoor cats who love to sit at the window and watch them; or it could be because my husband can’t decide what and where to feed them.


Mr. Albright is a good hearted man. He likes feeding the wildlife and if enough wild critters aren’t showing up, he’s willing to buy them a hamburger or steak to encourage them to come closer – just kidding of course - sorta. His real passion, however, is for the birds. The hummers are his newest challenge. He boils the water for the nectar, adds the sugar and worries if he’s done it right. Someone told him he didn’t need to boil the water, just use it straight out of the faucet. So he tried that. He cools the nectar on the kitchen counter; he cools the nectar in the refrigerator; he tries all sorts of combinations. He heard on a television program about hummers that you shouldn’t use red food coloring anymore, “that’s so yesterday.”

But the real trick is finding just the right spot to hang the feeder. He tried it under the eaves on the deck and a few came, but not enough to satisfy him. So he moved the feeder to another spot under the eaves – still no luck. He moved a red flowering plant to a hook and placed the feeder next to the plant, hoping to lure them in. A bit more luck was had. But nope, not good enough yet. Bear in mind this all took place within a day or two. The poor birds can’t find the feeder! It keeps moving.

He’d heard you shouldn’t place the feeder in direct sunlight; but then again he heard from some other people that their feeders were right in the sunlight in the yard. What to do, what to do.

I bought him a bright ruby red glass feeder for Father’s Day and he hung it on the deck, in the sun, next to the other feeder he had. Eureka! The hummers are coming to feed, dozens of times a day.

But now we have a new concern. While watching a PBS program recently on hummingbirds, we learned that they cannot survive on nectar alone. They are bug eaters. What if we don’t have enough bugs around our place to sustain the little hummers? I have a plan, which I’ll share with my other half as soon as he gets done boiling more water. We should go to a swamp, scoop up some stagnant water where there are sure to be larvae of mosquitoes and other nasty things. Then we’ll bring the swamp water home, pour it into 55 gallon drums and let the little suckers hatch. That will ensure that the hummingbirds have enough food to keep coming back to our feeders. ‘Course, we won’t be able to sit on the deck anymore to watch them, with all those mosquitoes buzzing about. We’ll have to join the cats at the windows.

Happy Summer.