Frantic Hummers

A new reader, Victoria, stumbled on an old post which had the audio from the hummingbirds “clicking” as they flew around. She was wondering what they looked like.

Funny you should ask.

It turns out that this weekend, while I was trying to get some peace and quiet sitting in the shade in the back yard and reading, a rough and rowdy band of three hummingbirds decided that I was an idiot who didn’t know that their feeder (which I was sitting near) was empty. They buzzed me repeatedly, and would hover right in front of my face within an arm’s length, then zoom up to hover next to the empty feeder, then zoom back down into my face, and repeat two or three more times before zooming off into the trees. The message seemed pretty obvious.

“Look, stupid human who’s supposed to keep the feeders filled! This one’s empty! See! Hey, look at us! Hey, look at the empty feeder!”

After they did this two or three times and I was too surprised and stunned to get my phone out, two of them came back for one more pass.

I haven’t played with the audio to clean it up and the YouTube compression algorithm butchers the sound a lot, but you can still hear them zooming.

For having a brain that’s smaller than a walnut, they sure can fly, and apparently make the connection between me (or at least, people in general) and their feeder being refilled. They’ve watched me do it enough times. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible or likely, but I’ve been wrong before.

Or I’m wrong now, anthropomorphizing the crap out of the situation, and just feeling guilty about letting the feeder get empty. (There are other feeders, the trees are in bloom and covered in pollen, and the place is lousy with flowers in bloom. None of them are starving to death.)

It also reminds me that the Forever Home, wherever it might be, needs to have lots of birds in general, hummingbirds specifically. I live for this particular style of abuse.