fierce little thangs

Pound for pound, what is the fiercest animal on the planet? I don't know about the planet, but the fiercest thing in our back yard is a hummingbird. We live in a typical subdivision with retention ponds so we have some pretty mean ducks and geese that wander through the yard from time to time but they're wimps compared to the hummingbirds. We had a huge snapping turtle mosey through the yard as it was going from one pond to another and all it did was bite at a hoe handle that I waved in front of its mouth. Ho hum.

The hummingbirds, on the other hand, are putting on quite a show. I have read that hummingbirds are so fierce that they will attack a hawk that infringes on their territory. I believe it because our backyard has turned into a war zone.

We had a bee balm plant with red flowers that a hummingbird liked to visit in the evening. Well the blooming time for the bee balm was nearing an end and since I enjoyed seeing the hummingbird I thought I'd get a feeder. Well, MKH decided if one hummingbird feeder was good then two would be better. So we got a feeder to put in the garden and one to attach to the kitchen window.

All of a sudden, instead of one peaceful little hummingbird visiting the flowers, we have five hummingbirds that are constantly fighting for their territory. One hummingbird will sit in the top of our happy willow tree (this was supposed to be weeping willow but it refuses to weep, so we call it the happy willow). As soon as another hummingbird gets close to the feeder, the one that is perched in the tree will swoop down at top speed and dive bomb the other. This starts a big fight so they will fly furiously through the yard, in and out, up and down, through the branches of trees, around the house, up over the roof, all over the place.

Sometimes there will be two pairs of hummingbirds fighting at a time and you think they are going to collide with each other. Then all of a sudden another hummingbird will show up and start dive bombing both of the other sets. They also make an angry muffled chirping sound when they fight. It reminds me of the puny noises you make when you're having a horrible nightmare and you try to yell but for some reason all that comes out is something like a squeak.

My favorite times are when MKH and I are sitting on the back patio and they'll go zooming by about two feet from our heads. Once in a while they'll stop and fly in place and look at us as if to say, "You ain't seen nothing yet....watch this!" And then off they go again.

If I ever get a picture I'll put it on the blog. All I have now are pictures of where a hummingbird used to be just a second ago.