365/2: 322. Meet ‘Flit’, our wintering hummingbird.
We have a wintering hummingbird. Up at 6AM to give him warm sugar water (it’s below 27 at night here, when sugar water freezes). He’s skittish as all get-out, and I have to sneak up on him to get any image at all. Tight crop, through a screen. Hopefully he’ll get tamer if he sticks around.
Job #1 right now is keeping him alive through these cold nights. The skittish behavior is something we’ve observed before, when instinct takes over. He obviously would love to migrate, but can’t lace up enough food sources to make it ... so he’ll disappear for a day, half a day, and then reappear. If he could make it to the Bosque down in Albuquerque, he’d have food sources all the way down to Mexico. It’s this first 75 miles that’s brutal for late migrators.
Comments:
Surprisingly hardy little buggers, aren’t they? Yet fragile.
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WE noticed a hummingbird looking for food in our latest cold snap. (27 at night, over freezing, but barely, during the day, for a week or so). Filled the feeder a bit, then 30 minutes later, what do we see but two hummingbirds fighting over the feeder. Makes you think that perhaps they can’t eat if they’re not fighting over a food source.