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Bushtits, Hummingbirds and Baseball

© Terrie Murray

I'm having one of those days. It's raining so hard that the green garden tape streamers I have hung outside my sliding glass door to deter birds trying to fly through it are all stuck flat and dismally against the glass. The sky is a uniform shade of wet, dripping gray, resembling both my spirits and my nose. The wind is blowing rose branches against the window near my desk, reminding me accusingly that I have not yet done my fall pruning. My resident squirrels sit in the platform feeder and eat sunflower seeds with their red tails curled over their heads like furry umbrellas. Even the crows seem subdued. Yesterday dozens of them raucously chased a red-tailed hawk out of the neighborhood. Today I can only find one, huddled about fifteen feet from the top of a fir tree, silent and sedentary, rain glistening on its black beak. My thoughts roam and refuse to be tied down to a single subject, even with writing deadlines looming.

The goldfinches do not seem deterred by the weather, and continue to eat pounds of thistle daily. This storm front also blew in the first of my winter-resident pine siskins. I've seen two or three over the past couple of weeks, but today a small flock is competing with the goldfinches for space at the thistle feeders. Over the weekend I saw the first of the winter golden-crowned sparrows and ruby-crowned kinglets, and I think I heard the high-pitched whistle of a cedar waxwing. Bushtits are beginning to arrive in larger and larger flocks, and when they feed they completely cover the caged suet feeder I hung for them last week. My friend Marilyn from Seattle, also a nature writer, calls bushtits "pilgrim birds" for their quiet, gray plumage and their peaceful, sociable way of getting along together. It's hard to watch them and not smile, even on a day as dreary as this one is.

Not so peaceable are the Anna's hummingbirds which now come even more regularly to the nectar feeder, as they will all winter. Whereas in the summer they roamed the neighborhood, now they seldom leave the fringes of our yard. There are two that I've been able to identify, an adult female, wearing a garnet necklace, and a young male with a garnet hood. Although both use the feeder, they do not feed together and they've been known to divebomb each other and argue over the feeder if they're feeling particularly aggressive. Then they retreat to their respective corners of the yard and preen until the next round. Feisty little jewels!

The copyright of the article Bushtits, Hummingbirds and Baseball in Birdwatching is owned by Terrie Murray. Permission to republish Bushtits, Hummingbirds and Baseball in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.