The hummingbirds are gone.  I refilled the feeders two weeks ago, and they haven't been touched.  I haven't seen any drinking at them, either.  They've clearly taken off for Mexico and South America for the winter.

Can I come too?

The local hummingbird population has increased.  I don't know whether they're babies from the original pair that showed up this spring or if our feeders have simply attracted more.  The new ones (there are at least three, as far as I can tell) are rather smaller, which makes me think they're babies.  However, hummingbirds DO NOT SHARE.

Ohhhh, how they do not share.

They fight over the feeders.  One bird approaches a feeder, and another dive bombs him.  They swoop and stab at each other in two gray-green blurs, making little chittering noises.  Their wings thrum with a deep throbbing noise, rather like a quiet full-sized airplane or helicopter.  They chase each other around the trees like tiny warplanes.  Vicious nectar-suckers, all of them.

When they aren't fighting, they're eating.  They drain the feeders like crazy.  I change the sugar-water once a week to prevent mold from growing, and refilling them halfway used to provide plenty of food.  Now I fill them completely, and they're still empty by end of the week.  (Good thing the stuff is cheap to make!)  When the feeders run dry, the birds hover outside the windows and glare inside.  Kala says she half expects to hear rapid-fire drumming on the front door, followed by a squeaky, "Hey!  Where's the friggin' FOOD?"

One of the more vicious birds is very shy with people.  He has a gray-black coat and a ruby throat.  He prefers the kitchen window feeder, and drinks several times an hour.  But if he spies a human watching him through the glass, he leaves the perch and goes into hover mode.  If the human doesn't move, he'll sip while hovering.  If the human moves, he zips away to the safety of the maple tree in the back yard.  But let his brother approach (I think it's his brother--they look alike), he turns into a chittering hover bomb of fury and attacks with all the anger of hornet.

Maybe the Air Force should look into using hummingbirds in some way.

This afternoon I was working on the living couch in view of the hummingbird feeder.  The hummingbird came by and fed, its wings a blur.  It sipped and sipped, then sped off.  A few minutes later, it came back, sipped and zipped away.  It returned again for yet more sipping.

A hungry day for hummingbirds.

So I was in a Petco store a while ago and I passed their crappy little display of hummingbird feeders, and on the shelf underneath them was a display selling humming "nectar."  You could buy it by the pint, quart, or gallon.  I stared at the gallon a moment, then heft the jug.  It cost--heart attack time here--FIFTEEN DOLLARS.  Yes, you read that right.  Fifteen freakin' dollars.  I checked the ingredient list.  "Water (purified by reverse osmosis in a filter . . . [blah blah blah]"  The blah blah blah part went on to desribe the exact process used to filter TAP WATER. 

Second ingredient: sucrose.  Yep--plain old sugar. 

Third ingredient: red food dye. 

In other words, it was red sugar water, and they were charging fifteen bucks, or seven times the price of a gallon of milk.

I was stunned.  People actually bought this crap?  For fifteen bucks, you could buy enough of the ingredients at the store to make a whole barrel of the stuff!  Someone has a really good racket going here.

For a moment I was outraged as well as stunned.  Then I thought, "Anyone who's stupid enough to buy it deserves to get rooked."  And then I thought, "I wonder if I could get in on it?"  Hell, I could sell my hummingbird nectar for two dollars per gallon less than theirs and still make out like a bandit.  Hmmmmm . . .

Today I took the hummingbird feeders down to refill them.  While I was rinsing them out in the sink, the male hummingbird buzzed around the kitchen window where one feeder usually hangs.  "Hey!  Where's the food?  Bring it out or I'll buzz you silly!"

I finished with the feeders and brought them out to hang.  The hummingbird hovered a few yards away, supervising.  "That's right--get it on the hook.  Now back away, buddy.  Clear the eats!"

When I went back inside, he zipped straight over to the feeder and drank.

Hummingbirds, incidentally, are quite territorial.  I'm guessing the male and the female that hang around are a mated pair (and I'm looking forward to the babies that I'm sure are coming), but even they don't share feeders.  The male drinks out of the kitchen feeder and the female drinks from the living room feeder.  The feeder on the side of the house doesn't get much business, and I suspect they've declared detente on that one.

This morning a female hummingbird hovered at the feeder outside the living room window, sipping at the syrup.  Way cool!  I ran to snatch up my camera, but Aran rushed up to the window and scared her away before I could get anything.  The birds clearly know the feeders are there, though.

We have hummingbirds!  Or =a= hummingbird, anyway.  I was in my office when Mackie came running downstairs.  "Daddy!  There's a hummingbird upstairs!"  By the time I got up there, though, it was gone.  Kala and the boys had all seen it, though.  And now we know the feeders are working.  Neat!

After supper, I went out in search of hummingbird feeders.  First stop: PetSmart.  Their web site had several models, and I figured their store would carry them too.

They carried exactly two models.  Both were completely plastic.  $10 and $15.  Chintzy, ugly--nothing I wanted around my house.  I left them on the shelf.

I knew that Meijer has a fairly extensive pet section and figured they might have feeders, so I drove down that way.  This took me past Home Depot and Lowe's.  Of course!  I zipped in there right quick.  Found several models of feeder, ranging from $3 to $30.  For the price I would have paid for plastic at PetSmart, I got glass and brushed copper at Home Depot.  Sheesh!

I also noted the many, many cartons of hummingbird nectar I could buy.  "No boiling necessary!" says the copy.  Oh, brother.  So they're saying I can buy this in case I don't know HOW TO BOIL WATER??

I like the feeders I found.  They look cool, and I want the weather to clear up so I can put them out.

This week I'm going to get some hummingbird feeders.

Early last fall, I was looking out the kitchen window and I saw a ruby-throated hummingbird hovering just beyond the glass.  I just had time to blink before it darted away.  I didn't know we got hummingbirds around here, but now that I do, I want to bring them around.

On-line research was, once again, my friend.  I learned how to make hummingbird feeder syrup (1 part sugar to 4 parts water).  I uncovered the Great Red Dye Debate, which reminds me of the Great Autism Vaccine Debate.  Red, you see, attracts hummingbirds, since that's the color of some of their favorite flowers, and people often color the syrup in their feeders to encourage the birds.  Hummingbird enthusiasts warn that red food coloring doesn't harm humans but there's no evidence that it doesn't harm hummingbirds, and most of the web sites order you not to put red food coloring into hummingbird syrup.  "The feeders are usually painted red where the syrups comes out," they say.  "Or you can tie a red ribbon around your feeder."

Interestingly, there's absolutely no evidence that red food coloring DOES harm hummingbirds, either.

I probably won't color the syrup simply because it'll be cheaper.

I also learned that it's a good idea to place a couple-three feeders around the yard, but not in view of each other.  Put one in the front yard and one in the back, or two feeders around the corner from each other, and so on.  Hummingbirds are territorial and one bird will try to drive other birds away from multiple feeders if it can see them at the same time.

Hummingbirds arrive in this area in mid- to late April, and it's a good idea to put feeders out a couple weeks before then to establish early that your yard is the place to go for free eats.  Weather allowing, I'll head out tomorrow and see what I can find.