By Loretta Humble/Around the Town
The hummingbirds finally got to my house. I’ve been looking for them since March. Oh, I’ve seen a few stragglers, but never enough to empty one small feeder before the juice got old. Then last week a whole crowd showed up. Sometimes I see 15 or 20 buzzing around, picking fights with one another. Thinking they sure are late this year, I did a little internet search to find out where they’ve been and why they are so late. Well, duh. They’ve been up north already, and now they are headed south. They basically detoured around me this spring. I heard other people wondering where the hummers were earlier this year, so I’m trying not to take it personal. But I would still like to know what they were up to this spring, and they aren’t telling. If you know, I’d appreciate hearing.
They are doing something else I don’t understand. One minute there is a small cloud of them, buzzing around, fighting with one another, and then they all fly off—every one of them. In a few minutes they are back. I want to know where they go and why. Since they fight over the feeders when they are here, why would they fly off together? This puzzles me even more, now that I’ve learned that they don’t migrate in a flock, rather it’s every bird for itself, a bunch of little Lone Rangers.
The males go first, the adult females come next, and the teenagers leave last. They are all stuffing themselves right now, and will nearly double in weight before they take off for that 20 hour non-stop flight across the Gulf of Mexico to Southern Mexico or Panama. They need to eat twice their body weight in food every day. A “fun facts for kids” page told me that is like you or me eating more than 400 hamburgers a day.That page also told me that besides nectar they also eat quite a few tiny insects, especially females when feeding their young. Some are so small, they have been known to be caught by dragonflies and praying mantis, trapped in spider’s webs, snatched by frogs and stuck on thistles. They have feet so tiny that they cannot walk on the ground, and find it awkward to shuffle along a perch. I found all this very interesting. I hope it didn’t bore you too much. If you love the little buggers you probably already know how to make your own nectar rather than buy that stuff at the store, but I’ll tell you anyhow. Bring a quart of water to boil, add one cup of sugar to it, stir well and cool. Don’t add food coloring.
I’ve filled up most of my space with this hummingbird stuff, but I do need to tell you we went to our first Master Gardener class and Shelly and I are excited about it. Our first assignment is to find out what kind of soil we have. We start by putting some of our soil in water in a fruit jar and see how it settles. I’m watching mine and don’t like the way it looks. I think I put too much water. Also, I have new unfinished kitchen cabinets on my front porch which have now received two coats of paint and when they get another one, they are coming in the house and replacing my old ones. The hummingbirds don’t like it much when we work on them.
But maybe the neatest thing I did this last week was to go to lunch with the girls of the Friends of Malakoff group. Jessica Crye, the much-beloved proprietor of the much-beloved My Favorite Things tea room, gift and antiques shop, was there. We all miss that place so much. Jessica brought the same energy to town as Kristi Dykes Hull at Rusty Circus does now. If we could have had them both involved in downtown at the same time, no telling what would have already happened.
But things are popping right now. Lots of big plans for Cornbread Festival, which has been moved to the fall, is joining up with our annual scarecrow blowout, and it is now known as the Malakoff Cornbread and Scarecrow Festival and will be held October 22. It looks to be bigger and better than ever. I’m getting excited.