Clarice and Tweets;

I have at least two female Anna's in my feeder area. I saw two "battling"
over the feeder yesterday morning, the first time I've seen two at once this
year, neither drank. Since about Thursday I've been seeing two distinct
feeding patterns, one comes straight from her perch in the front of the plum
tree and feeds two to four times, returning to the same general perch,
pattern repeated several times. The other pattern the bird comes from the
east. flying under the porch roof, takes a quick sip or two and flies away
the same way. May be the same bird, may be another...

(The feeder is on the SW corner of a south facing covered porch that is open
on all sides, the plum tree is due south. A cherry tree is due east, but
I've never seen a hummer there. I was thinking today, the plum tree has
never been properly pruned so it's a dense tangle of branches. It makes it
hard to pick all the plums, but I'll bet it gives better cover for the
birds, besides the hummer, chickadees, juncos and Bushtits are the main
visitors.)

================
Cliff Drake
Ballard
Seattle, WA
ardea at qwest.net




----- Original Message -----
From: <jbroadus at seanet.com>
To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 1:13 PM
Subject: hummers


> I have so far received replies from fortunate hummer feeders living in
>
> Federal Way - 3 separate responses
> "Seattle" -2 responses
> and the rest - on response, but some have multiple birds
> Bellevue -1
> Normandy Park -1
> Burien -1
> Edmonds -1
> plus one response that was inadvertently deleted.
> One thread that has come up is the tendency to "boost" the sugar content
of
> the solution during cold weather. More sugar makes the solution less
likely
> to freeze and some feeders are making the ratio (instead of the usual 1
> sugar:4 water) more like 1:2.
> Are there any sources of data that would indicate that this is not a good
idea?
> I am also remembering a report from last summer that a feeder was using
> Cane sugar rather than beet sugar, as her hummers seemed to prefer the
> cane. Anyone else notice a preference?
> (Safeway has a two for one on bags of sugar this week, but the label
doesn't
> give the source - it's just " SUGAR")
>
> Clarice Clark
> Puyallup, WA. 98371
> mailto:jbroadus at seanet.com
>