Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The Swarm

Now that the air is smoke-free, the hummingbirds have arrived in full force. We always put up one hummingbird feeder in late April, then gradually put up the second and then the third as the flock gets bigger. It goes from "a few hummingbirds" to "a swarm" and then finally "an infestation of hummingbirds." We're at the final stage now, with all three feeders up. This year, I think they were a little late getting to stage two, but once I put up the second one, it was only a day or two before I put up the third feeder.

Yesterday evening, around 6:00, I filled up all three with fresh sugar water and by noon today, the little one was completely empty! It's a good thing sugar is so inexpensive. Saturday we went to the grocery store and bought six bags of sugar (4 pounds each). We told the cashier it's for the hummingbirds and we must've distracted her too much; when we got home and looked at the receipt, we discovered that we'd been charged for nine bags instead of six!

We've been getting a small amount of rain at home lately, and maybe a little more out at The Ranch, judging from the radar. We're planning another trek out there this weekend to check on the prairie dogs. We've gone from worrying about the drought to worrying if they can swim. OK, not seriously, just in a joking way.

1 comment:

Elle said...

Looks like all that smoke, plus drought, didn't harm the hummingbirds. Yay! Bet the babies at the Ranch are fine and enjoying some showers. Just think, if the adults moved a few miles away then y'all have populated an even larger area with the doggies.