Hummingbirds Fighting For Juicy Feeder

Elaine Meinel Supkis

This last two weeks has been a battle to the death with the gypsy moth invaders. They won. Except for a few fruit trees which I carefully clean off every three hours, all the trees as far as I can see are completely and totally stripped of all leaves! It looks like winter. Already, the local bird life is very disrupted by this. Since I feed wild birds, I have had a chance to watch them closely since they are sticking to my house a lot now.

Over a week ago, I was climbing around my pear tree trying to save it. So far, the tree still has leaves! While up in the crown, a buzz flashed by my ear. I couldn't see who it was and thought it was one of my bees checking me out. Then a second buzz and in my face was the tiniest of birds---a ruby throated hummingbird. He looked really bad off, feathers dull, skinny, he was desperately trying to get nectar from the flower pots on my deck.

The caterpillars have decimated not only the trees, especially the wild cherries, but also ground flowers. The hummingbird was starving. I ran inside and told my husband, we had to go out and buy a feeder for the hummingbirds that afternoon. So we set it up two hours later and the hummingbird spied on it for another day, wondering if it was dangerous. Finally, he took a sip.

From that moment on, it was 'his' feeder! An hour after he supped, the female who is drabber than the showy male, came to feed. For four days, they visited the feeder regularily. The male began to stake out the feeder. He would sit on one of my dead rosebushes that was killed by the caterpillars and watch the feeder closely. If any of us came outside, he would buzz us but as the days went by he quickly became accustomed to our faces.

Then another starving hummingbird showed up. The male became quite excited. His chest which was fairly dull became a brilliant red as he flexed his tiny feathers and flashed a signal that clearly said, 'Danger!' Then he flew back and forth in front of the invading hummingbird, displaying his emerald blazon of glory. At first, the invader fled. But then would sneak back and take a sip.

After a week of displaying and sneaking, the invader was strong enough to fight back. Yesterday, instead of retreating, they fought like French duelists, darting back and forth through the pear tree's interlacing branches, slashing at each other with rapier beaks.

The results are, they all take turns now.

I have bees as well as hummingbirds. These creatures have an eye for beauty and beautiful means colorful. They have carefully cultivated flowers for millions of years. Bats fertilize the flowers of cacti in the desert and their flowers are all white because they glow in the moon and star shine. But hummingbirds and bees live in the desert and because of that, many cacti and other plants display brilliant red, yellow and pink flowers. Each plant offers their customers the prettiest dainties and the bees and birds have a most discriminating eye.

Many species of birds have turned this critical eye upon themselves and the females in particular have selected their mates with a very judicious eye looking for brilliant colors. We are a dull, uninspiring species in comparison.

Many of the sharpest colors we see in nature is due entirely to the tireless efforts of tiny bees and small hummingbirds, working hard to spread pollen of flowers they like. We forget their importance. Bees today are under the gun and so are hummingbirds. In the case of the birds, nearly all of whom commute from north to south with the changing seasons, human destruction of their winter quarters as people move increasingly into warm latitudes, is destroying their entire species.

I used to care for hummingbirds in Tucson. The ruby throats came in winter and left in summer. As suburbs ate up their environment, at first it was little problem for them because people planted flowers. But now, houses and malls blanket the Tucson Valley and most people no longer garden because water is costly. Golf course don't help. They are mostly grass.

The real problem is in Central America. The jungles are being hacked away rapidly and global warming is doing a good job of killing off flower species the hummingbirds have carefully cultivated for millions of years.

The insect eating birds are in graver straits than the hummingbirds. I have nesting boxes high up under the eaves for them. Swallows and fly catchers have lived there for years. But their numbers are not increasing but the insect population is! I used to have many more insect eating birds follow my mower around as I hayed the fields. This year, I had two crows! The mower would cause clouds of insects to rise and my birds would circle me as I patiently ran up and down the cuts. The fewer insect eating birds we have, the more bugs. This insect invasion has made my insect eating birds happy but they can't make even a slight dent in the insect invasion.

Pesticides and habitat loss in the south are decimating them faster than they can reproduce. My goldfinches have successful nestings up here on my farm and then they fly off. If even two return, I consider this fortunate!

I have habitat for many more! But they decrease each year rather than increase. I farm in such a way as to encourage them nesting. Before heading south, the swallows will come here by the hundreds but they are just as bedevilled as the goldfinches. This saddens and alarms me.

We won't get a balance of nature using chemicals. We need birds, we need worms in the soil, we need water that isn't acidic and we need regenerative soil. As an organic farmer, I lament the loss of all of this.

I hope we figure out how to work with Nature before She decides to pull the plug on homo sapiens.

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Comments

[D.F. Facti]

Wonderful story, Elaine. I think we should take up a collection for your birds. Has your gypsy moth story made the news? I am so far out of it. Horrible.

[larry]

My sister-in-law got me started growing cardinal flowers. They blume late JY, and the hummingbirds love them. Also Bee Balm. Is it advisable to add supplements to the sugar water used in the feeders? The gypsy moths are a real drag. Often, not always, the trees will develop a bad taste for the caterpillars, if they survive being ravaged. I think bats coupled with pheremone atractant during the mating period would be helpful. The egg-bound females don't fly, the males have to find them, and confusing the males with added pheremone may make them more susceptible to foraging bats. BT should get the caterpillars, but trees are very difficult to spray from the ground. People tried to control the gypsy moths using parasitic wasps, but these introduced pretators turned on the Luna and Cecropia moths, and now their populations are in trouble.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Rebalancing nature after invasions takes many centuries. Introducing more alien species usually backfires badly.

I once caught a luna moth in my sink! They are big and lovely to look at, it was as big as my hands. I have a picture of it somewhere, I hope.

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let's join our hands together to stop this kind of wrong doings. It may risk lives in the future if we just let them continue.

[moncler netherland]

Beautiful!!! You truly have an eye for colour.

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I like you on facebook and follow through google reader!