Last night, well over an hour past sunset, a hummingbird was perched on the feeder. Our feeder is hung a few inches from our big plate glass dining room window, right by the cat perch. It’s a form of kitty tv, though the hummingbirds and the cat have come to ignore each other. It has been cold at night lately, and a deep freeze is on the way. Had I not disturbed the bird, I think it may have roosted on the feeder all night.
There are two hummingbirds that are sharing the feeder this winter, a bright red-headed male and a female, or maybe a sub-adult male. A third young male, with just a little red feathers on the throat, also makes an occasional appearance. Anna’s Hummingbirds are a common over-wintering bird in the Seattle area. They’re very talkative--in nearly any neighborhood, you can detect their insect-like clicking chatter, and then maybe a blur as it zips past. The abundance of hummingbird feeders in the city must be playing a role in the expansion of their range.
Generally, my two hummers are at war. We are fortunate that hummingbirds are as tiny as they are. I think of them as one of the most aggressive members of the animal kingdom. When one sits on the feeder, it keeps a watchful posture between sips, jigging its head back and forth as though it was watching a tennis match. Then the other will zoom down, chasing the feeding bird away, and both hummers will hightail it at a million miles an hour around the corner and up into the Madrona tree, chattering up a storm and obviously saying nasty things to each other.
At sunset tonight the temperature was a little above freezing. The bright male hummingbird was at the feeder, taking long sips to tank up before the onset of darkness. The other hummer came up and hovered just off the feeder. The male rose and made a half-hearted protest, but you could see that his heart wasn’t in it. Then something happened that I’d never seen before. Both hummingbirds settled on opposite sides of the feeder, and drank under the cover of a momentary truce.
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