Critters, Part One

When we were first buying our house, we got a lot of advice and information from others.  "Make sure it's a house you can stay in for at least 5 years."  "Your list of house duties now will never end."  "Don't buy a house in your first year of marriage" (whoops!).   The one thing people didn't tell us and that we weren't prepared for was how many critters we'd be dealing with.   Seriously, it's like a zoo around here.  So intermittingly throughout the blog, we'll be paying tribute to the menagerie that is our living space. 

We have to confess that most of the critters we'll be describing have caused us much annoyance.  But today we'll be focusing on the critter that actually brings us much joy...the hummingbird!  Last year we bought a hummingbird feeder at Molbaks with the hopes that our yard would be fluttering with those crazy fast wings.  But no such luck.  So we gave it a try again this year.  With homemade sugar water, we put out the feeder, hung some colorful flower baskets close to it and waited.  To our surprise we finally got hummingbird visitors.  That's right--not just one, but several!  And then we quickly realized that these weren't your average hummingbirds....these things are HUNGRY!  For a few weeks we were refilling the water every 2 days.  Sometimes they're a little feisty too and fight each other to get to the feeder.  But man there's nothing like capturing a glimpse of the little guys and seeing them be still for just a few seconds to get a drink.  They fascinate us.

Megs has been trying for weeks to capture the hummingbirds on film.  She would see one on the feeder, run to grab her camera and of course it would fly away.  And then it wouldn't come back while she was standing out in the yard.  The minute she went inside, it came back. This process repeated about 5 times.  She finally had success the other night after sitting on the deck for 20 minutes and taking at least 10 shots.  Megs is now officially a hummingbird stalker.

James wanted to write an ode to the hummingbird for our blog and wrote it in the form of a haiku (we're channeling Ryan here):

Hummingbirds

Red feeder syrup

addiction

More critter stories to come...