Hummers

Every winter, most of our hummingbirds (including the most numerous of our four local species) migrate to warmer climates (mostly Costa Rica). Each spring they straggle back into our area, until by roughly May 1st they are all back.

And so again this year. Our most common species is probably the Black-chinned (Archilochus alexandri), followed by Anna’s (Calypte anna), Costa’s (Calypte costae), and the fairly rare Allen’s (Selasphorus sasin). The male Allen’s stand out because of their coppery orange color. According to our reference books, they are strictly migratory visitors, though in the summer we see them at our feeders every day.

Speaking of feeders… At the moment we have seven feeders, each with eight feeding holes, holding a total of ten quarts of hummingbird “nectar”. While there are hummingbirds on them all day long, in the couple of hours closest to dawn and dusk is when they are the busiest. Last night, in a window with four feeders, I watched well over 100 hummingbirds jostling for access to the 32 feeding holes on those feeders. Watching with me were three cats (Maka Lea, Tippy, and Boots) and one dog (Lea). Hummingbirds don’t make a lot of noise individually, but…150 or so hummingbirds, all aggressively attacking the 32 feeding holes, that made quite a racket!

This morning I made six quarts of hummingbird food. We’ve experimented a lot with various ratios of sugar to water, food coloring, etc. I’ve also read many different opinions about how one should make the “nectar”. Some of these recipes are amazingly precise (e.g., “mix one quart of water with three cups plus one-and-a-quarter teaspoons of organic fructose"). Some sources said ordinary sugar (sucrose) is fine; other sources recommended pure fructose; still others recommended blends. My conclusion: either nobody really knows, or it doesn’t really matter. Ordinary table sugar is by far the least expensive of the alternatives, so we tried that. The hummingbirds loved it. We have several times experimented with various ratios of sugar to water — the hummingbirds will drink them all, even if there’s only a small amount of sugar. But if feeders with various ratios are hung side-by-side, the feeders will empty in order of the sugar concentration. The hummingbirds, given a choice, go for the feeder with the most sugar. We’ve also experimented with food coloring, to see if the hummingbirds cared. It’s clear that they do not care one whit about food coloring — we can leave it out altogether, make it the traditional red, or make it purple, orange, green, or even black — and they don’t care, they’ll happily drink it anyway.

In the summer, when we’re feeding hundreds of hummingbirds, it’s not at all unusual for us to use 25 or 30 pounds of sugar each month. I haven’t been rigorously tracking it, but subjectively our use is going up each year — and so is the number of hummingbirds visiting us. Last night’s show was the most I’ve ever seen in one place, anywhere. I suspect that our consistent feeding (we’re quite religious about keeping the feeders full) and the open water (a dripper bird-bath) nearby is maintaining an artificially large local population. It seems quite likely that this population is dependent on our feeders. And since we’ve been doing this for almost ten years, it is certain that there are now multiple generations of dependent hummingbirds. If something happened to us and the feeders were no longer filled, I’m sure the population would scatter elsewhere in a quest for food. But so long as we keep the feeding up, I suspect we’ll have this beautiful local concentration of hummers to enjoy…

Don't Abandon Us!

Did you ever wonder how the Iraqis themselves feel about the talk in the U.S. (and elsewhere) about withdrawing the troops? Listen to Hoshyar Zebari (the Iraqi Foreign Minister):

Iraqis are standing up every day, and we persevere because there is no other option. We will not surrender our country to terrorists. They have failed to cripple the elected government, and they have failed to intimidate us into submission. Iraqis reject their vision of a future whose hallmarks are bloodshed and hatred.

Those calling for withdrawal may think it is the least painful option, but its benefits would be short-lived. The fate of the region and the world is linked with ours. Leaving a broken Iraq in the Middle East would offer international terrorism a haven and ensure a legacy of chaos for future generations. Furthermore, the sacrifices of all the young men and women who stood up here would have been in vain.

Iraqis, for all our determination and courage, cannot succeed alone. We need a healthy and supportive regional environment. We will not allow our country to be a battleground for settling scores in regional and international conflicts that adversely affect stability inside our borders. Only with continued international commitment and deeper engagement from our neighbors can we establish a stable democratic, federal and united Iraq. The world should not abandon us.

Don’t Abandon Us is the title of his article; the excerpt above is his conclusion. Read the whole thing.

Reid, Murtha, Pelosi, Obama, Edwards, Kerry, and the overwhelming majority of Democratic kin unabashedly want to abandon the Iraqi people to their fate. I’m sure they would bristle to hear their position described as abandonment; they would prefer to describe it in friendlier terms. But abandonment is exactly what it is, and it would immoral to do so. I am convinced that it would also be a strategic error to hand Iraq to al Qaida; an error that would come back to bite us in future years. Ignoring the terrorist threat (of which al Qaida is but the most prominent example) won’t make it go away, no matter how much the white-flaggers would wish it to…