When I first set out to learn how to blog (such as it is), it was dedicated solely to birds. I’m not a fanatic, but I enjoy bird-watching. I enjoy feeding them too, so they come to me. When we were thinking about buying our condo, I thought long and hard about it in light of one rule: no bird feeders on balconies.

Obviously I decided I could live with that, but it didn’t last long. I decided that since I had leftover seed, I’d put out small amounts in a little holder–not even a real feeder–and see what happened. After a few days, the birds discovered it, including sparrows, mourning doves, and starlings. (Everytime I think about starlings I say the word in my head with the same disgust and contempt that the sheriff in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves says “Celts.”)

I decided regular seed wouldn’t do, if it attracted all those big, messy birds. So I looked into what birds eat and decided to put down only shelled peanuts, which little birds like chickadees, tufted titmice, and white-breasted nuthatches like. It’s worked, those are my three biggest visitors. I do get sparrows and the occasional mourning doves. But the chickadees, titmice, and nuthatches are the most common, along with, depending on the season, juncos, cardinals, red-bellied woodpeckers, and more.

This year for the first time I hung a hummingbird feeder. I’ve wanted one for ages but didn’t want to deal with cleaning it and stuff. This year it suddenly didn’t seem like a big deal, and it hasn’t been. The biggest problem is that our community has a huge problem with ants, and I know hanging sugar-water isn’t helping, but truthfully the measures I’ve taken to prevent the ants from invading my petunias and installing their aphid colonies have been largely successful, and so the hummingbird feeder hangs in the petunias.

There’s a family of ruby-throated hummingbirds nearby. For those who may not know, ruby-throats are the only hummingbirds I’d see here in DC-area, so identification isn’t difficult. I’ve seen both the male and female and at least one juvenile. For all I know there could be two families but I’ve never seen two together at a time.

Hummingbirds are very bold little things. For their size, maybe their flying abilities make them more confident. They’re the only birds that can fly backwards. That and their small size make them pretty agile. They’ve definitely adopted my feeder and I like to think that the few ants who make it up here add a little protein to their diets.

So a couple nifty little stories about my hummingbirds: yesterday as I sat on the balcony, one of the hummingbirds, I think one of the young’uns, came and inspected me. It hummed around about a foot away from my face, darting around to look at me from different angles. Since I don’t look anything like a tubular flower, I can only think that it was just curious about this big creature always sitting around near its feeder.

A few days ago I left work early (by like a 1/2 hour, big whoop), and sat on the balcony with my wine and book. The book didn’t last long because the hummingbirds got busy, and at the same time, a sharp-shinned hawk showed up on my other side, with HIS dinner (a lot less appealing, given that they eat mostly small birds). I have to say, watching the smallest bird and one of the biggest birds (in our area, anyway) eating their dinners at the same time was kind of cool.

I live a boring life, in case you haven’t deduced that yet.