The Hummingbird Chronicles

       Green October #1 by WSK

I have no doubt that 2013 will turn out to be the warmest year on record for the North Coast.  It's nearing the end of October and we're apparently living in San Diego, though the sunny days in the 60s are followed by increasingly colder nights, now in the low 40s.  So it's a pleasant sort of surreal so far.

The hummingbirds seem hungrier, I don't know what that may mean.  Flowers are still blooming but my feeders are emptying as fast as they usually do in January, maybe faster.  I'm pretty sure we have three regulars now, and maybe four.  The larger hummers with the longer beaks I took to be migrants turn out to be residents who are now feeding regularly here.  That suggests there's also a pair of the smaller, rounder ones.  But there are seldom more than two around at a time, though I have seen three at the same time--two competing for the feeder and one flying by.

The past week or two we've also been hosting a number of small white butterflies with a black spot or two on their wings.  Dragonflies follow the hummers when they get near the feeders, while the hummers also have to deal with the webs that industrious spiders weave and re-weave after a wrecking wind.  Spiders pose at the end of web strings in our windows like Halloween decorations.

The hummers provide entertainment as they buzz at each other and then suddenly alight on the clothesline side by side, then spin off and return to feed on opposite sides of the same feeder.  They know me and often come around when I'm outside.  Once recently I was watching one from the kitchen door window, as it maneuvered around an almost but not quite empty feeder.  It clearly wasn't getting all it wanted, so it tried each side, then flew underneath it and tried that, then flew above it and tried the top.  Then it flew directly opposite where I was watching and hovered in place looking at me, as if to demand, how do I work this thing?

Otherwise they have me well trained.  Two feeders well stocked.

Update: So of course the day after I posted this the weather changed abruptly.  After these weeks of unseasonable summer, for the past few days we've gone directly to unseasonable winter.