It's the birds and the bees time #phenology

Sometime within the past few days, small bees(?), about half the size of honeybees, have discovered the grape jelly feeder and the nectar feeder we hang for orioles and hummingbirds. The bees(?) arrived several weeks after the ants had found the nectar feeder. We're still at a loss to understand how ants have found all three nectar feeders. Do they "smell" the sugar water, as they detect pheromone trails? Would they randomly crawl up and down the front of the house?

ruby-throated hummingbird at nectar feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

One of the feeders has a water moat to protect it. We've noticed chickadees using the moat as a drinking fountain. That, plus squirrels climbing on the feeder hangers, plus evaporation, makes keeping water in the moat a challenge. We're still looking for a local source for a second water moat. The store where we bought the first one was sold out when we looked last month. What the solution may be for the feeder that's mounted on the window in the den is beyond us. That's the one that keeps collecting quantities of teeny, tiny, sugar ants. They get in through the feeder holes and can't get back out. Then they drown and we wash out the bodies and refill that feeder every couple of days or so.

Baltimore oriole at nectar feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

The Baltimore orioles seem to have shifted more toward the nectar feeders since the arrival of the bees at the grape jelly, although sometimes an oriole will just ignore the bees and feed on the jelly. Watching the turnover in birds and bees and ants at the sweet feeders adds a good deal of variety to the normal assortment of grosbeaks, goldfinches, chickadees, nuthatches and woodpeckers. Throw in an occasional blue jay, cardinal and mourning dove, blue a red-winged blackbird and we've got a case of the proverbial "guess who's coming to dinner?"

red-winged blackbird at sunflower feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

Birds Again

Jim Harrison, 1937- 2016

A secret came a week ago though I already
knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.
The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds
are harbored in my body. It’s not uncomfortable.
I’m only temporary habitat for these not-quite-
weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation
and now they’re roosting within me, recalling
how I had watched them at night
in fall and spring passing across earth moons,
little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing
on their way north or south. Now in my dreams
I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,
the watery face of earth as if they’re carrying
me rather than me carrying them. Next winter
I’ll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado
and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching
on undiscovered Olmec heads. We’ll say goodbye
and I’ll return my dreams to earth.

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