Thursday, August 30, 2007

View From My Backyard - Crazy Hummingbird

o
I almost unsubscribed to an enewsletter I get from a National Wildlife Organization because I find many of their emails are not very informative and not horribly interesting. But, their latest email newsletter had an article that caught my eye...and talked about a subject I am a little more familiar with. No matter how much I make my yard friendly to wild life according to their check list I am never going to see a deer trot up to my back window. It ain't happen'. For one, we live in a busy suburb with no real wooded area nearby, but even for the stray deer who comes our way I highly doubt they can make it over or under our 6ft white vinyl fence nor would they want to with our two crazily barking dogs on the other side. Nor can we lure the occasional squirrel. We live in a new community and all our trees are about 7ft high with about three 3ft branches. Not much for the squirrel community to want to move into. I know there are some rabbits but haven't found them munching in the backyard...just in the front where they are safe from our mutts. But what we can attract are birds and my newest interest is hummingbirds. Anyways, this e-news talked about how it may seem like hummingbirds are attacking...and it does...I go out to water my flowers and one zips by my head every minute or so. But, what the article pointed out is that there is an increase in numbers this time of year as the hummingbird young are up and flitting about as well. So, that is why my 4 hummingbird feeders keep going empty and why I feel like I am under an air raid when I step outside...the hummingbird babies are all grown up and flitting about. Cute! I guess my lone hummingbird is not a nectar addict..he has just numbered up and sure enough...if I watched long enough I saw that it was not one humminbird at all - but more like two or three at least! So I thought I would sit still for awhile outside and catch one in action. Here it the picture I got as a result.

I Am The Crazy Neighbor Lady


Yup, that's me. I walked our two dogs today after work and that seems normal enough, right? Well, I also took a bag with me and picked up all the recyclables I found along my walk. By the end of my walk my bag was full and I was tripping over the dog's leash and struggling to keep them from bounding happily into oncoming traffic while I stooped to pick up a discarded soda can or water bottle. I must have chose the optimal time to take my walk, because at least twenty cars went by and each one had to slow down to check out what I was doing...not to mention the neighbor lady who stood out on her back porch with her arms crossed disapprovingly trying to assess what I was up to the whole time. LOL! I just cannot stand how people are so inconsiderate of the world we live in that they can just throw their recyclables out their car windows. Especially when we have free pick-up and even huge canisters for our recyclables. Can it be any easier? Apparently not.