Hummingbird Wars

Every barn, like every office, has its share of drama, with different players and factions battling it out for power or resources or whatever they feel is important. Fortunately for us, we don't really have too much human drama at our barn, but there is another soap opera being played out every day as we have been discovering over the past few weeks.

We bought a hummingbird feeder a month or so ago and picked a place for it by the side of our tack room at the barn. We filled it up with nectar and waited for the birds to appear. And waited. And waited. We FINALLY started to see some action last week, the main taker probably a broad-tailed hummingbird, as pictured above. He's absolutely gorgeous, but boy is he territorial. The feeder is partly obscured by the tree next to our tack room, and so he sits on a high wire about 15 or 20 yards away, with just the right view, and watches His Feeder. He hangs out on the wire most of the time and makes regular trips down to drink his fill. Any time another hummingbird tries to stop and use the feeder, The Guardian (as we have come to call him) swoops down at warp speed and chases his rival away. He's rarely out of our sight.

There is one particularly ballsy guy (we call him the Intruder--aren't we clever?) who just tempts fate on a regular basis. He's figured out that he can fly to the feeder from behind the tree and the tack room, and he will quietly sit on one of the feeder's perches (instead of hovering) out of view of the Guardian, and drink his fill until The Guardian figures it out and all hell breaks loose. The humming, swooping, and divebombing is jet-fighter worthy--the Air Force's Blue Angels would be impressed.

Apparently even we are not immune. When my daughter E went to change the nectar on Saturday, The Guardian flew down from his wire and hovered around and in front of her, just a foot or two away, chattering and scolding her the whole time about messing with His Feeder. He only left her alone after she hung the feeder back up. Finally satisfied that all was once again right with his world, he went back up to his wire and started his usual vigil all over again.

It's been fun to watch the battles, but we feel sad that none of the other birds really get the chance to use the feeder. So we've decided that we may have to get another feeder and put it around the corner out of The Guardian's main view. Maybe then the others will be able to share in the nectar bounty. Or maybe we'll have started on the road to hummingbird feeder addiction, deeply in debt to C&H Sugar, end up with a hundred feeders and be featured on Animal Planet's Fatal Attraction show having been swooped to death by starving hummingbirds.

More news from the front as it happens. Film at 11.