For the Birds ...

This adventure of contributing things for publication in the local paper started YEARS ago when my husband found a hummingbird laying on the floor of his shop building. We had feeders out and enjoyed watching the hummingbirds fighting over the feeders.

The hummingbird had obviously ventured in while my husband was working on a project, and ended up locked in overnight. Hummingbirds use much energy, and without access to food, this one was in poor shape. My husband saw that its heart was still beating, and brought it to me.

The hummingbird was so “out of it” that it didn’t try to get away from us, It allowed me to hold it. I put its beak into one of the “flowers” on a feeder and it actually started to eat. Eventually it gained strength. We had left it carefully in an open plastic ice cream bucket, nestled in an accordion folded paper towel while we ate lunch. When we went to check on the bird, it had moved as if it made an effort to fly out. I gently picked it up, and off it flew towards the neighbor’s yard.

The internet says that humming birds can remember people from year to year and the next spring one seemed to hover in front of me and look at me. I like to think it remembered me.

We live west of Southside Baptist Church. Just outside the city limits. We can see Griffin Park, and in the winter we can see the high school and gym from our front yard.

We have several bird feeders, so it’s difficult to keep them from being empty. Doves and grackles eat like they’re starving. Since the sparrows and other smaller birds were getting cheated of the free meals, my husband built some feeders of a wire that’s too small for the larger birds to get access to the food.

Cardinals, bluejays, sparrows, and wrens are common visitors to our feeders, besides the larger birds. Last spring a pair of sparrows hatched four or five chicks in a nearby tree. I have one feeder that is transparent that attaches to a window with suction cups.

It’s amazing how territorial the birds can be. When the chicks were finally flying, a parent would sit in the feeder, a chick would join them, and the parent would feed them as if they were still in a nest and had to be brought food. As they grew towards adulthood, they were feeding themselves. And they were constantly fighting with each other, running each other off, kind of like a game of “king of the hill.”

Last year we had the privilege of watching a pair of geese raise their brood of eight chicks around a neighbor’s stock tank. It was fun watching the adults raise the chicks. They’d swim for a while, then stroll into the field and eat bugs.

The geese would disappear for a few days, then return. They were walking, taking advantage of other bodies of water nearby, there are four other tanks in the neighborhood. Wintertime they left.

Recently, we headed out to exercise at the Wellness Center and found geese cautiously checking out the field around our neighbor’s tank. Two of them were a little larger than the other seven. We assume it’s the pair and chicks from last year. The internet says that pairs usually return to the nesting ground they had chosen the year before.

It was worrisome when we didn’t see them for a couple of weeks. Then they showed up again. With 7 goslings to feed, it probably means rotating the water and food supplies in the area.

The geese have moved on, I guess. Though the goslings were in the neighbor’s tank recently, but the neighbor’s dog harassed them and they moved on.

It would have been interesting to see if the pair was going to raise another brood of chicks. Hopefully they’re settling on another local tank. We might see them when they come to feed at the neighbor’s tank again.

The internet says geese usually return to nesting locations. But do they raise a brood every year? Or do they settle in the nesting area while they finish raising the chicks that won’t be mature for another year?