Flamingo Musings

Cooking, Canning, Baking - It's All Kosher

PhotoHunt: Balanced

The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Balanced”

Two weekends ago, it was absofreakinglutely freezing here. In Miami, of all places!

My cats were indoors, the plants were as protected as we could arrange. I did worry a little about the birds who visit the feeders in my backyard, but most of all I worried about the little hummingbird who’s been a guest in and around my yard since November. I woke up that Saturday morning to see this:

Poor little guy sat there for what seemed like forever, balanced on the hummingbird feeder, without moving. After a few minutes, he started to move his head around, and began to feed. Normally, I never see him at the feeders, but this seems to be the day he discovered them. Even the hummingbirds decided it was better to not have to work so hard for their food, and the feeders gave him the most bang for his buck. Or bill. Whatever.

After awhile, I was relieved to see him fly up to balance on the telephone wire. I didn’t notice till I started editing these photos, that he seems to be picking at something up there.

If you look very closely, you can see that he has a bit of spiderweb in his beak – and no doubt a spider along with it. Hummingbirds don’t survive on nectar and sugar water all day. They require protein, too, and it usually comes in the form of tiny spiders and insects.

I came to realize that the little guy must have just been groggy – coming out of torpor, a state in which the hummingbird lowers his body functions and goes into a kind of short hibernation, in order to avoid having to feed at night, or in order to survive cold.

Heck of a balancing act, eh?

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Wonder what it's like being able to perch so carefree like that?BTW, I don't keep a checkbook register by hand any longer, either… but I do still have the checkbook 😉

  6. The cold weather was fun for a day or two but it sure did last a long time! I felt sorry for all the birds and animals outside in the cold. I spent most of the time snuggled in my heated cat cup.

  10. Just amazing photos. We have one who comes around here in the summer, and he's always a blur. Couple that with my poor photography skills, and, well! Nice choice for this week. I played too. 🙂 Have a great weekend!

  11. Great shots and I know it's got to be hard for the wildlife in Florida. I've heard abouit the weather there being exceptionally cold and hurting fish, birds, and then on the human side, farmers. Happy weekend.

  18. Great shots of these little birds. We have them around our house also even in the cold winter (Pacific NW). They are great balancers – even up on the tips of trees so they can survey the surrounding for threats and rivals.

  20. That hummingbird did a balancing act in a lot of different ways! I'm glad he made it through your cold snap! In FL, you got cold, here in CA we got WAY too much rain!

  22. I love in CO so we're used to cold in the winter but your story reminds me of something this summer. I have a wildflower garden near my deck and one day, a hummingbird came to feed from the agastache. I had never seen one feed so thoroughly…so much so that he would stop and rest on a nearby bush before continuing. I had never, ever seen a hummingbird stop flying so thought is was very special. Glad to see you got pictures; I was a afraid to get my camera for fear of him leaving so it's all in my mind!Thanks for taking me back to that special day.