Hummingbirds

What’s wrong?

It is a bit late to put out hummingbird feeders, but they’re up and I hope for better results.

Gary and I worked for the same airline and became fast friends.

He had to move to a more sedate department, if there is such a thing in the airline world, due to an ongoing heart issue.

After a successful career as a high school basketball coach, he applied to the management training program and was immediately accepted.

Basketball is a high tension game in spurts, but it only lasts so long and that’s it for the day. In the airline world, things run wide open all day to get airplanes in, unloaded, reloaded and safely out on time. It is like eight or more hours in the state playoffs.

Gary’s heart couldn’t take it so he went back to the education world teaching something like “Health” and “Driver Education.” He rode that into retirement.

He sent a picture last week. He has fourteen hummingbird feeders hanging from the joists of his deck and more in trees.

“Put ‘em up and they’ll come,” he said when I asked how he attracted so many hummers.

He buys commercial size bags of sugar from the local warehouse club. His mixture is 4:1, which in amateur amounts would be a quarter cup of sugar to a cup of hot water.

Gary spends evenings mixing syrup by the gallon and storing it in plastic jugs he gets from his church. They use gallons of tea from the grocery store and he salvages the jugs.

He has become to hummer feeding what he was to high school basketball. No food coloring nor packaged feeding stuff, no premixed hummingbird syrup because “it couldn’t be less complicated.”

I have had as many as four feeders, hoping to attract a squadron of my own hummers, but so far have only seen a dogfight.

One hummer “owns” all the feeders. If a new hummer takes a sip, the owner attacks with a high-speed pass.

I don’t know how the feeder owner survives because she spends days keeping birds away from her feeders and doesn’t have time to take a sip herself.

This is nothing new. This same bird, or a relative, has been at this three years. I didn’t know they lived that long. When she isn’t chasing off trespassers, she sits on a limb waiting for the next one.

I’m tired of it and want to enjoy the soft murmur of hummingbird wings, but I’m being bested by a tiny thing weighing maybe a couple of ounces at most.

There has to be a better way.

joenphillips@yahoo.com