What a soap opera!
A few days ago I wondered if any birds would show up at my feeders. Now it’s big drama out there! A flock of about twenty mourning doves make an appearance every day, and almost as many purple finches. Two hummingbirds are regulars, too.
This morning all hell broke loose.
The finches and the doves show up as usual. The hummingbirds zoom to the feeder in the paloverde. Then the gila woodpeckers make the scene. Four of them! They fight over the sugar water, and also climb up the pole to get at the seeds. Which I don’t understand. Woodpeckers eating seeds? I though they were fruit and bug eaters. Anyway . . .
I’m not so sure the hummingbirds are fighting.
If you get my meaning. The two of them fly together in great arcs, up so high I lose sight of them, which is probably for the best. Let them have their privacy.
The gila woodpeckers are big and their bills are longer.
That means they get to make the rules, I guess. They get to push the other birds off the seed tray or away from the water bowl. They get to scare up the doves.
They’re very clever, too.
My dorky hummingbird feeder doesn’t have any perches. This presents a problem for the woodpeckers. One of them figures out if he perches on a slender paloverde branch above the feeder and slowly moves toward the tip of the branch, at a certain, precise point his weight causes the branch to bend down to the fake yellow flowers on the feeder. From there he can suck up all the sugar water he wants.
The other three observe this tactic.
The battle is on to see who stays on the flimsy branch and who gets shoved off. The losers fly to the ocotillo and hang on its stems, waiting for their turn at the sugar water.
Between the high-flying hanky-panky of the hummers, the fluttering, flapping, and flushing of the doves, the happy singing and chattering of the finches, and the bully antics and adroit acrobatics of the woodpeckers, my eyes can hardly keep up. It’s a wonder I don’t spill my coffee down the front of my shirt.
Oh dear, look at this blog post.
I’m seven paragraphs deep already and I haven’t made it past breakfast yet! I’m blogging in the BLT today. It’s still very cloudy. In fact, we had a few sprinkles. Enough sunshine made it to the panel so I can post.
It’s a struggle all morning as I work to add more items to the “Shopping List and Links” page. The laptop and air card fight me at every turn, cranky because they aren’t gorging on charge like they’re accustomed.
Now you can shop from my blog for anything you want at Amazon.
The link is in the sidebar. Many of you comment that you’ll do your Amazon shopping here. I appreciate that very much. It’ll be fun to see what earnings are generated. I’ll post that information in my monthly financial reports.
I have to get away from the computer. The crew and I go for a walk and find many interesting shapes in the desert.
Today’s Walk in the Desert
rvsue
rvsue and her canine crew 