Wednesday, July 12, 2006
if you know my husband, you know how well he can start up a hobby or passion and pretty instantly become really good at it. for instance, just after we were married, we decided to take a pottery class together. it was my second pottery class and his first. by the second week of class, kenny was throwing pots like he'd been at it for years. even the instructor, who was a lifelong potter, was convinced he'd taken pottery classes before. since moving out to where wildlife is more than grackles and neighborhood cats, we've become pretty amazed at the different birds we get to see up here. and kenny has taken to learning more about them.

because of his new hobby, hummingbirds have taken over our back yard. that is, until i cooked for them.

a few weeks ago, kenny decided to hang a few hummingbird feeders outside our enclosed back porch window. he started out with just two, and worked his way up to five feeders. now there are only four as one was overtaken by mold and insects. the hummingbirds came in droves for kenny's homecooking (sugar water: one part sugar to four parts water). we had to fill each of the feeders at least once a day and probably could have filled them twice a day.

last week, i thought i'd fix up a batch for the birds. we were using a box of instant nectar that my mom had given us (she gave up on feeding the hummingbirds in her back yard). i followed the directions on the back of the box, not realizing that there were other directions on the side of the box that were different (using less water).

when kenny filled the feeders with my nectar, we noticed the hummingbirds didn't come back as quickly. then we realized they hadn't been there all day. the nectar stood in the feeders for over a day.

they didn't like my cooking.

yesterday, kenny refilled the feeders with his homemade concoction. we've seen a few hummers back at the feeders, but not the dozens we'd get at a time. perhaps they'll return slowly, just like they came at first.

kenny took a few dozen pictures of hummers at our feeders just to get one in flight. he got this pretty cool shot after 15 minutes of clicking away:


Wednesday, July 12, 2006 5:52:37 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Wednesday, July 12, 2006 6:14:24 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
hummingbirds rock. Easily my favorite bird to watch. I put up a homemade feeder a couple of weeks ago here, but it didn't work out. I'll probably try again at some point, but I'm not sure how many hummingbirds are in our area.
jonathan
Wednesday, July 12, 2006 9:38:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Hi
That is soooo sweet... feeding the hummingbird .
That would be really good if you could put more pictures.
keep up the good work
goodluck
Rasha
Tuesday, July 18, 2006 5:17:19 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Gorgeous! We've been having fun with the bird feeder we put up in front of our picture window. The girls exclaim "Birdy!" several times a day. I love it.

I don't, however, love the squirrel that eats all of the seed. And the fact that we've attracted so many birds (and one pesky squirrel) that we're refilling once every day or two!
serina
Thursday, July 20, 2006 2:23:30 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Hey Liz!

Stefan forwarded your blog link to me and I have so enjoyed reading your entries...you're writing is beautiful. My email is unclepickles@hotmail.com. Drop a line sometime!
Matt Miller
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