The soft-settling first flakes of the season turned in to an all-out winter storm shortly after my last post. At about 10pm on Monday night, this was the view out my front door:
The snow is sticking around for a few days, courtesy of a cold arctic air mass that has been sitting on us following the big winds, but even now the clouds are moving in and the temperatures are creeping back up toward freezing.
In weather like this, the overwintering Anna's hummingbirds are desperate for food to fight the cold temperatures. Since the feeders freeze regularly in this cold, keeping them fed is a small challenge. They prefer to start feeding around half an hour prior to sunrise, which even during the short days of this season is usually earlier than I want to venture out in the cold. But, that's part of the obligation of keeping a bird feeder. The birds depend on you, and you need to be dependable. So it's out in the cold, first thing in the morning, to set out a thawed feeder. If the feeder freezes and I bring it in to thaw, I can expect the dominant male hummer (who has officially claimed this feeder as his own) to hover expectantly outside the kitchen window in the spot the feeder usually hangs, waiting with understandable impatience for me to return it.
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