Flyby

It's good to be king.

In May, I looked out the glass door to the cabin deck, surprised to see a hummingbird sitting on a perch attached to a deck post.  I thought it was too cold, and too early, for hummers.  But he peered at me through the glass, turning his head left and right, so that he could see me with both eyes.   

Afterward, I heard mad whirring from the front deck.  Something buzzed past the two empty hummingbird feeders hanging on the deck with a shrill whistle, soaring at great speed from one side of the deck to the other.  Someone was hungry. 

The hummingbird feeders left by previous owners look like oversized, red plastic strawberries — a little garish.  But we finally cleaned one, filled it, and hung it up.  The hummingbird, whom we named Henry, sampled the goods, but he was still unhappy. We could hear an agitated whir every time he flew past. 

Clearly, the other strawberry feeder needed filling, too, and we wouldn’t have any peace until it was.  So we cleaned the dead wasps and bugs out of that one, as well as residual red sticky goo, and filled it with clear sugar syrup. 

The feeders are Henry’s domain.  In the evening, if I sit on the deck alone, Henry will drink at the left feeder, and then sit on the dowel.  He fluffs out his feathers, rather husky for a hummer, and watches me.  He turns his head left and right in a smooth alternation.  He will sit for 10 or 15 minutes, until it’s time for another drink, and then find a new perch.  Or if the dog is on the deck, Henry will feed, and then perch on a bare aspen branch nearby.  Henry shuns pacing dogs. 

The hummer feeders hang on either side of the covered part of the deck.  Between the feeders is a dowel, which I assumed held a bird feeder at some point.  My mother donated an old feeder and some shelled sunflower seeds to fill it, and we hung that on the dowel between the hummingbird feeders.  

Henry guards his feeders like a spoiled regent who won’t tolerate change.  He defends his kingdom fiercely against other hummers.  When a robin perched on one of Henry’s favorite aspen branches, he raised a ruckus until the robin stayed lower on the tree.  Henry resents the sunflower feeder, and sometimes shoos away crossbills, finches and nuthatches, chasing them at lightspeed well into the trees.

King Henry I

 One evening I sat with a bird book and a pair of binoculars, determined to identify a type of nuthatch? warbler? with black and white markings that was eating the sunflower seeds.  I was stumped by mystery bird, but I intended to identify Henry.  With a white collar around his neck, Henry is feisty enough to be a Rufous, chubby enough to be a broadtail,  He sat on the rain gauge for a good long time after one feeding, and in the sunset light, I could see his neck was an iridescent candy apple red.  A ruby-throated hummer.  

 

 

 

We put an old patio table under the deck cover, and Henry will dive right past the ears of anyone sitting near the railing.  This reminds me of Tom Cruise in Top Gun, taking a flyby.  Negative, Henry, the pattern is full.