Friday, June 8, 2012

Non-Adversarial Bird Interaction



Usually my posts having to do with birds involves shotguns and clouds of lead or steel pellets and death. This is not the case in the "off-season." During the Spring and Summer my wife and I enjoy providing refreshments to the myriad birds that live in the woods and fields near our house. I installed several birdhouses that my son and I built a few years back in the Cub Scouts and these dwellings see inhabitants and baby birds every year. We have feeders and baths and have daily visits from Cardinals, Yellow Finches, Junkos, Chickadees and the ubiquitous English Sparrow. There is some shooting involved...I punish thieving squirrels with a BB gun thru an upstairs window to keep those rapacious grey bastards from gobbling everything.

The most interesting of the winged dining guests is the Hummingbird. We stock these feeders with sugar syrup and these little wonders buzz in and out all afternoon. It really is a treat to watch them feed and then zip off like a lazer...their speed and maneuverability is amazing.

3 comments:

2Stoics said...

I think that's something people don't understand about a certain class of hunter, that they're naturalists at heart. Lovely post.

Pigtown*Design said...

do you boil your sugar syrup? there's a funk that can get into non-boiled sugar syrup that's dangerous for the hummingbirds.

Main Line Sportsman said...

PD..Yes,my wife makes the boiled mix from an internet recipe