{"id":4494,"date":"2012-04-19T08:06:02","date_gmt":"2012-04-19T15:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=4494"},"modified":"2012-04-21T15:04:33","modified_gmt":"2012-04-21T22:04:33","slug":"the-boys-are-back-in-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=4494","title":{"rendered":"The Boys Are Back In Town."},"content":{"rendered":"

We spotted the first ruby-throated hummingbird on Sunday.\u00a0 I immediately rushed to find my single remaining hummingbird feeder from last year.\u00a0 Because everyone knows that hummingbirds send out scouts and if they don’t find your feeder out they’ll go somewhere else for the season.\u00a0 “Everyone” being a woman I overheard at church.\u00a0 In any case, it was enough to send me scrambling.\u00a0 Too bad my feeder only had one remaining flower to sip from and leaks out of the bottom.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

I suppose I was lucky to even have that feeder.\u00a0 Hummingbird feeders at my house are magnets for kick balls, basketballs, baseballs, frisbees, sticks, footballs, hulahoops, Nerf darts, and any other object that can be launched into the air repeatedly until it strikes the window, causing the feeder to crash to the ground and shatter.\u00a0 Have you ever seen those beautiful hummingbird feeders made of marbled glass or wonderfully hued blue wine bottles or delicate tubes wrapped in fancy curls of copper coils?\u00a0 Yeah, me too.\u00a0 In magazines and gift stores.\u00a0 Because hanging one of those outside my window would be the equivalent of tearing $10 and $20 bills into pieces on the patio and then sweeping up the mess and tossing it in the trash.\u00a0 That’s pretty much how hummingbird feeders end up around here.<\/p>\n

So we switched to the cheapo plastic feeders that you can find at local home improvement stores for $2-$3.\u00a0 They still fall.\u00a0 And they sustain damage such as springing leaks or losing their plastic fake flowers.\u00a0 And if you want perches for the birds to sit on while they sip, you have to make them yourself.<\/p>\n

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But they are good for at least 3 falls before they have to go in the recycling bin.\u00a0 So whenever I hear that characteristic thud and smash of a feeder being knocked to the patio, I don’t have to run outside screaming, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?\u00a0 AGAIN???!!!\u00a0 YOU BROKE THE BIRDFEEDER AGAIN??????\u00a0 HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU…” like the kind of ballistic person who shows up at the post office with a sawed off shotgun.\u00a0 I just settle for muttering quietly to myself and shaking my head like a deranged but generally harmless homeless person.<\/p>\n

The only problem with the cheapo feeders is that they aren’t carried all season long.\u00a0 They are snapped up by the mothers of other bat-wielding children in the beginning of the summer.\u00a0 Then, when you need replacements, all that’s left is this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Which costs $36.95.<\/p>\n

Oh, you can try asking the store clerk:<\/p>\n

“Excuse me, but where are all the hummingbird feeders?”<\/p>\n

“Right there on the shelf.\u00a0 You’re lookin’ at ’em.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“No, the type that cost $2-$3, are plastic, and hang on the window?”<\/p>\n

“Those ARE plastic and hang on the window.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“OK, let’s pretend all I care about is the $2-$3 part.\u00a0 Where is that type?”<\/p>\n

“What you see is what we got.\u00a0 We won’t be ordering any more hummingbird feeders at this time because they’re seasonal.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Seasonal” is the retail word for “All the cheap ones are gone and we won’t replace them until the ridiculously expensive ones sell.\u00a0 Better try Goodwill.”<\/p>\n

But that’s OK. I figured it out this year.\u00a0 When it was time to run errands, I headed straight to Lowe’s.\u00a0 I snapped up 5 of the cheapo feeders and their hooks.<\/p>\n

“Wow,”\u00a0 said Pretty.\u00a0 “We cleaned out all their feeders.”<\/p>\n

A woman with a cart behind us peered over my shoulder.<\/p>\n

“Is that the last of the cheap hummingbird feeders?”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Just the ones off the shelf, ma’am.\u00a0 I bet if you ask that clerk he’ll probably get some more out of the back for you. “<\/p>\n

(They’ll just cost $36.95.)<\/p>\n

Then we hauled a** out of there.\u00a0 As we made our escape out through the garden center, the check out clerk commented on our purchase.<\/p>\n

“That’s a lot of hummingbird feeders”<\/em>, she said and then smiled at the kids. “What a great family.\u00a0 Do you homeschool?”<\/em><\/p>\n

I have never understood this question.\u00a0 Why do people assume that just because I chose to forgo the standard American family of 2.5 children per household, I must have chosen to forgo another of America’s standard practices—a public education?\u00a0 As far as I’m concerned having 4 children is one of the biggest reasons to support the public schools.\u00a0 I suppose you could stay home with 2.5 kids for 18 years, but with 4?????\u00a0 Wouldn’t you have to build one of those creepy safe rooms and lock yourself in it on occasion?\u00a0 Or have an isolation tank just to hear yourself think?\u00a0 No, thank you.\u00a0 Send my kids to school, please.\u00a0 I mean, what’s next?\u00a0 Raising our own food??!!<\/p>\n

I smiled back politely.<\/p>\n

“Yes, we homeschool.\u00a0 These are for our lastest science project.\u00a0 We’re creating homemade hookahs.”<\/p>\n

I figured that gave her something to google as we walked out to our car.<\/p>\n

\n

When we got home, I replaced the leaky feeder with missing flowers.\u00a0 But then I was afraid the scout might go to the other window and not see a feeder.\u00a0 So I hung another feeder on that window.\u00a0 But our windows are so big I figured we should put 2 feeders on each window–one up high and one down low.\u00a0 Which started a conversation about how high hummingbirds could fly.\u00a0 There was some controversy about whether they would fly up to the second story of the house.\u00a0 To test it we took a feeder to the upstairs window.\u00a0 Ordinarily we couldn’t put a feeder on any of those windows because the screen would be in the way.\u00a0 But several years ago, someone pulled out a screen to shoot squirrels.\u00a0 I tried to replace the screen but despite my best efforts to duct tape the screen back in place, it wouldn’t stay.\u00a0 So The Other Half was going to use the ladder to attach it properly.\u00a0 Needless to say (oh, but I will say it!), it has never been reattached.\u00a0 So it was no big deal to open the window, reach out, and suction the feeder in place.<\/p>\n

With a new feeder everywhere you looked, we were ready for the scout to return and spread the word about our hummingbird paradise.\u00a0 But then Big came upstairs, shaking his head.<\/p>\n

“I looked up hummingbirds on the iPad.\u00a0 Turns out there aren’t any ‘scouts,’ ” he said.<\/p>\n

He told us that ruby-throated hummingbirds don’t travel in flocks and are solitary except for a brief mating period.\u00a0 The reason you see a lone male hummingbird early in the season is not because he is a ‘scout’ for a flock, but just because the males migrate earlier than the females.\u00a0 And it isn’t our feeders that probably draw them to our location.\u00a0 Hummingbirds have a cooperative feeding relationship with yellow-bellied sapsuckers, which we have tons of in our little 4 acres of deciduous woodlands.\u00a0 Since the flowers aren’t in full bloom yet, the male hummingbirds rely on the sap from holes drilled into by sapsuckers.\u00a0 So where you find sapsuckers, you typically find ruby-throated hummingbirds.\u00a0 Although they certainly enjoy the feeders and we get tons of hummingbirds all summer long, it isn’t the presence of a plastic red feeder early in the season that draws them here.\u00a0 It’s the woodpeckers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Huh.<\/p>\n

Turns out we do a bit of homeschooling after all.<\/p>\n

“Well,”\u00a0 I said.\u00a0 “We’ll still get to find out if they’ll fly upstairs to the second story window to feed.”<\/p>\n

“But, Mom,” pointed out Middle, while tossing his baseball up and down in his mitt.\u00a0 “We hung up all <\/em>the feeders.\u00a0 Now what are you going to use to replace them if they break?”<\/p>\n

O.M.G.!<\/p>\n

“Back in the car, guys!”\u00a0 I yelled.\u00a0 “We gotta get to Home Depot before that lady with the cart gets there first.\u00a0 She could be getting the last cheapo feeder as we speak!!!!”<\/p>\n

Communing with nature can be so stressful.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/em><\/p>\n

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We spotted the first ruby-throated hummingbird on Sunday.\u00a0 I immediately rushed to find my single remaining hummingbird feeder from last year.\u00a0 Because everyone knows that hummingbirds send out scouts and if they don’t find your feeder out they’ll go somewhere else for the season.\u00a0 “Everyone” being a woman I overheard at church.\u00a0 In any case, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[167,166],"class_list":["post-4494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-birdfeeder","tag-hummingbird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4494"}],"version-history":[{"count":47,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4543,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494\/revisions\/4543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}