Flyway

Early this drizzly afternoon, I opened the front door to an unusual chatter of birds.  And there they were--perched on bare branches of every tree around, including the big Linden next door.  They seemed to gather there, and I had time to go around back with a better view of this tree and snap a few photos.  Before long they were all gone.

I'm not very good at identifying birds, though I love them all.  So I'm not sure if these were locals.  But from this behavior it seems possible that they are migrants, either leaving here for elsewhere, or pausing here in transit.  This area near Humboldt Bay is a flyway for various bird species, and February is a month some travel.  Anyway, I enjoyed seeing them and especially hearing them.  I miss the songbirds back in western PA.

This is also about the time that the hummingbirds chow down before they abandon the feeders fringing the back porch, usually later this month.  Some leave the area (the Allen hummers) though others stay (the Anna hummers.)  Even the ones that stay don't check the feeders very often if at all.  I see them in the front yard, if anywhere.  This year we've had our normal minimum of three regular visitors, a family that nests nearby for generations I suspect.  I didn't see much of them this year.  Time flies, along with the birds.  

Hummers in Humboldt December 2013

Winters here are normally wet and mild.  But after two relatively dry winters (last winter being very dry), the old pattern has been broken in another way: we had several nights in a row of sub-freezing temperatures.

Since it hardly ever goes below freezing, and because of the rain, we have flowers of one kind or another virtually year round.  I recall our first Christmastime here, when we were invited to dinner and afterwards took a walk through the neighborhood to look at Christmas lights and decorations.  But what we saw also included lots of flowers.  Someone remarked that here it is already spring.  That's not quite true but the scene was certainly striking to folks recently arrived from western Pennsylvania.

But this year the freeze has visibly killed the flowers in our yard, and no new flowers have appeared.  That may be why the hummingbirds are sticking so close to my feeders.  They're usually around more at this time of year, before they disappear some time after Valentine's Day (though I suspect they don't go far.)  But this year they are around the back porch almost constantly.

I suspected there were four of them but never saw more than three at the same time.  But this month I've seen four several times.  One afternoon all four were even stationary at the same time--three perched on the clothesline and one on a feeder.  Another day three were at the same feeder while the other flew around.

Today started sunny and mild, and when I refilled one of the feeders all four came around.  They were much more concerned with each other than with me.  They were flying right in front of my nose at one point, and it seemed even around me.  It was dazzling.

Now in mid afternoon the wind has picked up and it's turned colder.  The trees that shed their leaves have mostly just begun the process.  Brown leaves are blowing by.  A chilly scene of winter, anywhere.

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.

Pudge and Pema

So far this year we've got at least the usual minimum contingent of resident hummingbirds, being two.  We did get a couple of visitors to the feeder early in the summer, but they seemed to be passing through.  Our residents are small, with short, straight bills, probably a similar species to Anna's Hummingbird.  (But I'm not very good at that kind of identification.)  The visitors were larger, with longer, curved bills.

The novel feature this year is the hummingbird I called Pudge.  He (I'll call him he, but who knows) spent the better part of a month doing very little besides perching for hours on the clothesline near this feeder.  The way he was perched made him seem rather pudgy for a hummingbird, though he's either lost that now or it was an optical illusion.  Optical illusions are frequent with hummingbirds, particularly their iridescent greens and reds that seem to flash in and out of existence. 

We've had hummers perch on the clothesline before but never with the frequency or the apparent lethargy of Pudge.  Still, even though he stayed there for hours, I could never get close enough to him to take a decent photo.  He may well have been guarding his access to the feeder, and he was certainly chowing down.  So I put a second, larger feeder up, farther down the porch.  This did not seem to dismay him.  He just changed his usual position on the line to midway between the two feeders, presumably so he could keep his eye on both.

Lately he's less of a fixture there, though he does hang around for days at a time, and then disappears for days, seemingly.  Another hummer of his species also comes to the feeder--she (I imagined) seemed slimmer and smaller.  But now I can't tell them apart (though I have seen them at the same time, so I know there are still two.)  It has occurred to me that Pudge is female, was pregnant and has since given birth, but any evidence of an offspring is yet to be seen.

Earlier this week when I sat outside to read, I noticed that one of the hummers came to perch in some nearby bamboo, and then moved to perch even closer to me.  It seemed quite deliberate.  I'd guessed from an experience a few years ago (after being away for awhile, I was buzzed by a hummer who hovered directly in front of me and seemed to look me sternly in the eyes) that hummers recognize the person who feeds them, and I've since read that this is so.  They also remember all their usual flower locations, and even at which intervals it pays to visit them.  

As if to confirm this, the hummer in the bamboo made sure I'd noticed its presence, and then zipped directly to a feeder, fed for awhile, and zipped back. I've noticed similar behavior with Pema the cat--she patiently leads me to her dish when she wants it filled.  Apparently they worry that scatterbrained humans will forget the correct sequence.

As for Pema, she was of no interest to the hummers when she went outside, nor was she interested in them.  But since a scary and surprising bout with fleas early in the spring which resulted in serious illness, she doesn't go outside anymore (and doesn't seem to care.)  She'd stopped eating and drinking water, so we had to take her to the vet.  Getting her into the carrier may have injured her pride, but left both of us bloodied.  The vet said there had been a recent rash of flea problems, resistant to most remedies.  But finally one worked, and she seems fine.

Otherwise, Pema has forgotten how to sit on laps, which she had finally learned after several years.  On the other hand, she loves being brushed, and now has a complete routine she expects, or demands. I think life for her is a constant tension between what she clearly understands as the rules and benefits of domesticity, and the instincts and fears honed by her early feral life.

Harvest

After a winter-preview rain the day before, yesterday was sunny but with a strong cold wind. These pears are gone now, and I picked the last apples yesterday. What passes for winter here is on its way. Pretty good harvest, though, for the first year these trees have been out of pots and in the ground. But the mystery is, why aren't I seeing the hummingbirds as I used to?

This North Coast Place: Interregnum

Places in the northeast and midwestern states have been having their late winter snow storms, but the weather is also a little confused here. It's been raining and blowing here for more than 12 hours straight. Normally we would call this a winter storm, which aren't abnormal in late February. Seasons are kind of indefinite here in the first place, at least along this coastal strip where the difference between summer and winter temperatures is on the order of ten degrees. At any given moment of the year, something here is blooming.

But things do seem a little unhinged. This storm started very early this morning with thunder. We were guests for dinner in a house overlooking Arcata our first year here (Sept. 1996) with a fine vantage point to view some lightning. Our host told us to enjoy it, because we wouldn't be seeing much of it here. He was right. If we saw lightning or heard thunder once a year, it was a lot. But a few years ago, that was no longer true. Thunder and lightning storms aren't frequent or even seasonal, as they were in my western Pennsylvania summers. But they are no longer rare, and they occur at any time of the year.

Earlier this week there was ample sun and spring-like warmth. Which came after a series of rain storms, our brief winter a bit late this year. So it's both spring and winter, and therefore neither. At least the rain held off until after the candlelight Vigil last evening commemorating Indian Island. That's always a beautiful occasion and I'm sorry I missed it this year.

I've noted that our hummingbirds are still here. The last time I saw two was about 10 days ago, but I saw one yesterday, and the day before. I'm not a good enough observer to say if it was the same one, but I would guess it wasn't. My recollection is that in past years I started not seeing them around Valentine's Day, when the feeder would be untouched, the red liquid slowly losing its color over the following months.

The total eclipse of the moon the other night was unaccountably visible here. At this time of year especially, but even in the summer, you learn not to get your hopes up about observing celestial phenomena because the nights are often cloudy or blanketed with high fog. The clouds and fog hover at the horizon even more often, but the big rising moon was clearly visible as the eclipse began: quite a sight. I was doing errands in Eureka, and the moon was dead ahead of me as I started driving home. Later I could see the eclipse ending over the house across the street. Pretty neat. I still remember the first eclipse I saw as a boy, peering out my parent's bedroom window, and the awe I felt trying to get my mind around what I was seeing.

Hanging in, mid-January. BK photo.

The hummers are hanging in. BK photo.

Not Necessarily Ex Post Hummingbird

I may have been too hasty in declaring all the hummingbirds gone. A few days after I posted my goodbye, I glimpsed one at the feeder. I haven't seen one since, but I've kept nectar in the feeder and after a few days of stasis it's gone down considerably today, and it shouldn't have been because of the wind, as there hasn't been any.

So my working theory at the moment is that there is at least one hummingbird still around but it has increased its range because there are fewer food sources at this time of year, so it comes around our yard less often. We've had two warm, sunny days in a row, which also might mean a local hummer shook itself out of its torpor (a sleep-like state during which it conserves energy) for a big dinner.

The books say that Anna's Hummingbirds live year round on the Pacific coast, and that Allen's hang around the longest of those that migrate. Which raises the possibility that migrating hummingbirds have stopped by for a meal. In any case, I'm still looking, and refilling the feeder.

Bon voyage, hummingbirds. See you in the spring.

Allen's hummingbird, another leading candidate for a species
currently draining our feeder. I watched a trio of them
dancing around it with the sunset behind them.

An Anna's Hummingbird photo: E.J. Perker