I noticed that one of my hanging tube feeders looked pretty worse for the
wear after all our wind and rain; wet, clumpy seed and such. I decided to
take it down, empty, clean and refill it, about 10am this morning. Up until
today I have always done feeder maintenance and refills after the sun goes
down. As I reached out for the tube feeder I was dive bombed by two irate
Anna's. I realized that their feeder, hung from the apple branch mounted on
my balcony ceiling, was just about 3 inches directly above my head. I have
never heard such chatter before. They were MIFFED! I held my ground though
as I struggled to get the tube feeder off its hook. BBZOOOOOOOOOOM!!, a
third hummer, the male, came right up to my face and zig-zagged back and
forth in little short bursts and chirped away at me. I was just mesmerized;
I have never seen these little birds in full, bright light. Their feeder,
and apparently it is THEIRS, is under cover and when I look at them from
inside they have a west sky as background. Up until now I have only seen
dull little birds in almost silhouette. As I was being buzzed, or hummed as
it were, by the three I also saw one perched on an out waving branch of my
climbing rose, about 4 ft from me, and another perched on a branch of the
alder tree that grows up in front of my smaller balcony, about 15 ft away.
The sun was directly on all five of these little birds and I got a very good
close look at them. (I'm just so excited about this.) There is one male,
two females and from what I surmise, two juveniles. The two smaller ones
had very little color, just a small sparkle of bright green from what I
could see so I think they are probably juveniles.

Patricia Hansen
2 Balconies,3rd Floor
Tacoma, Wa. USA
pmhansen at drizzle.com


"Use what talent you possess:
the woods would be
very silent if no birds sang
except those that sang best."
- Henry Van Dyke