Our Birds Are Back!

When we moved down here to St. Simons Island last March, we reluctantly accepted a rental agreement that had the stipulation of not allowing pets. The condo's white berber carpet has certainly benefited from this stipulation, but it gets a little lonely around here when Pat is out of town.

Our second floor living room has a giant 12' sliding glass door on the balcony that looks out into a nice sugar maple tree and the local squirrels spend a good deal of time entertaining us with their antics in our tree and the adjacent pine trees.

Our other adopted pets are a bunch of Rubythroated Hummingbirds that we started feeding last summer and we were excited today to have our first bird visit our feeder this year. We wishfully put the feeder out on February 20th, but March is really early for them to be seen in Georgia and we hope that it is a sign that spring has truly arrived here in the Golden Isles.

We are pretty sure that the fellow (the males have red throats--thus the name) that stopped by today a few times is one that was here last year because he used the same branch in our tree as a perch when he wasn't eating. They are really territorial and dominant birds will perch adjacent to the feeder and defend the food source from other birds that aren't in their "clan." It's really funny to see little aerial "dogfights" between birds the size of your thumb.

I have a couple of cups of hummingbird food (1/4 cup sugar to 1 cup water) on the stovetop right now and both feeders are going out ASAP.

Hey little birds...come and get it...