Musings From The Farm Comfortable living in your own skin

I really like hummingbirds; they are beautiful and even though they are so small they are fierce little fighters, except when it comes to bees.   I always feel so bad for the little hummers when I see them being chased away from their feeder by bees. It is amazing to me that they are afraid of the much tinier bees buzzing them. But I guess they are no different than us, most of us folks are afraid of bees too. Who wants to get stung, right?

So what can you do to keep the little hummers from being tormented at their juice bar? The best thing to do is start with the right feeder. You can purchase feeders that are bee proof. It is designed so that it is too long of a reach from the top of the feeder to nectar below for the bees to get, but the hummingbirds still can lap it up to their hearts content. They also make bee guard tips, which can be purchased to use on feeders you already have.  I have a bottle type feeder that the bees really like, so I will try the bee guard inserts and see if they work. My dish type feeder works pretty well for keeping the bees away and I like it because it is really easy to clean.

There are a lot of tips on using oils or insecticide to keep bees away, but most hummingbird sites will advise against this, as it is not good for birds or bees. I’m all for communing with nature and figuring out how we can all live comfortably with each other. If the hummingbirds and bees can figure it out, so can we.

I have to tell you about a funny thing that happened one morning.  I had decided that the first thing I was going to do was make tomato sauce for dinner. I always make gallons at a time to can or freeze for those all too frequent days when I haven’t made anything for dinner.

I was chopping a lot of onions that were very strong and making my eyes tear. Suddenly I had a brilliant idea; I went and got my full-face respirator that I use for soap making. This may seem like a funny thing to do, but I was chopping a lot of onions and my eyes were tearing so much I could hardly see.  Plus I am use to wearing it for soap making so it did not seem like a funny thing to me. It was working perfectly, chopping onions and no tears.

Then Chia (the dog ) scratched on the door to go out.  So I stopped chopping and went to the door a few feet away and opened the door for her. But she didn’t go out; she just sat there looking at me in a state of shock with eyes just about popping out of her head. I said “its ok Chia come on, you can go out” She just stared at me looking like I was a space alien (how I wished I had a camera)!

Finally after more coaxing she flew past me out the door. Once safely in the garage she put on the brakes, turned around and looked horrified. As if she couldn’t believe that she was able to escape from the monster that had gotten into her home. Then she turned again and ran out into the yard.  I went back to my chopping, but made sure to take off the respirator before I let the poor dog back in. Once Chia was in the house I put my mask back on to finish up the onions and she gave me a relieved look as if to say” Oh that was you”. It was all pretty comical and I was glad to see she was not traumatized for life. Now the tomato sauce was simmering and I had to get back to work.

Killdeer are certainly nonconformist. Sometimes I think they are just plain silly. I go back and forth between feeling bad for those that have laid their eggs in my territory and thinking that they are the dumbest of all birds. I can’t say they have made their nest, because they just make a little indentation in the stones and lay their eggs right there out in the open among the stones. Not in the trees to keep the babies safe; if not crazy they are certainly nonconformist in nature.

We had what seems like weeks of cold rainy days that added up to 11 inches of rain. This pair of birds took turns sitting on their eggs or trying to lure unwanted gawkers away from their eggs. They looked wet and pitiful and I felt bad for them. Today the sun was out and we noticed one egg was missing. On closer inspection, we see one of the eggs has hatched and the chick was lying lifeless outside the “nest” on the rocks, looking like a somewhat fuzzy rock. The parents had already disposed of the remains of the eggshell he emerged from.  I crept closer and wondered if he was really dead. Then he opened one eye and popped up and wobbled away like a drunken sailor trying to hop up into my raised garden.

I had never thought about it before but there are two kinds of baby birds, “cute” and “ugly”; yes really, I’m not kidding. Baby killdeer are the cute type, technically called Precocial, which means, “ripened beforehand”. They incubate longer and when they hatch they are fluffy and bright eyed, like chickens and ducks. Cute babies are ready to run as soon as their fluff dries out. They feed themselves, following their parents example. Ugly types like robins and blue jays are called Alticial, meaning “wet nurse”.  They are born almost naked and blind and are completely dependent on their parents. Interesting that human babies are both, cute (well not in bird terms) and alticial.

For now, every time I go outside I look closely where I step, afraid I will step on the killdeer chick pretending to be a rock and he is really good at it. Being a bit of a nonconformist myself, I guess I can relate.