Heres the buzz: The hummingbirds are back and, boy, are their wings tired
I was delighted to spy the first hummingbird at my feeder the other evening. I’d been despairing, having put up the feeder three weeks ago, hopeful that some of the birds I first saw last summer would pay a return visit.
But: nothing. I dutifully changed the sugar water every few days and waited.
And then, as My Lovely Wife and I ate dinner on the patio Tuesday, a little fellow appeared.
Last year’s hummingbirds were champion hoverers. All hummingbirds are, of course — able to beat their wings 80 times a second — but what I mean is, most of my previous guests fed on the fly. They hovered above the plastic feeder, inserting their beaks while madly buzzing their wings. They’d land only occasionally.
This guy was different. He perched on the little red plastic ring around the feeder, drank from one hole, then scooched clockwise around the perch on his little hummingbird feet to the next hole. He drank there, then scooched again.
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A hummingbird scooching sideways looks like a penguin.
Frankly, he looked bushed. I would be too if I’d just flown in from Mexico or Panama.
I’m glad he was so comfortable there — catching his breath; having a cold one — and I hope he’s just the first of many hummingbirds who’ll stop by for a drink.
Bluebird's-eye view
Speaking of our feathered friends, my recent column on bluebirds reminded Kenneth M. Nagler of something that happened in 1977, when he was living in Upper Marlboro, Md. He’d put up a bluebird house, only to see a house sparrow drive out the adults and start to kill the chicks.
Kenneth rescued three of the hatchlings and contacted a friend, Lawrence Zeleny , founder of the North American Bluebird Society and author of the book “The Bluebird: How You Can Help Its Fight for Survival.” Zeleny told him the birds needed to be fed every 20 minutes during daytime.
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“That was the day of a daughter’s wedding,” wrote Kenneth, who now lives in Edgewater, Md. “So, during the ceremony and the reception, I had to excuse myself repeatedly to put tiny bits of food into the open beaks. I got the chicks to Dr. Zeleny, and he put them in a nest with chicks of the same size in one of the many boxes he monitored at the Beltsville Agricultural Center.”
Wrote Kenneth: “Not many people had that extra task to perform at a family wedding.”
He was father of the bride and of the birds.
A reader I’ll call Rich of Falls Church wrote to lament that a murder of murderous crows is dining on baby birds in his neck of the woods.
“This time of the year they come in and gobble many of the just-hatched birds, especially the robins, who don’t seem to do a good job hiding their nests,” he wrote.
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Rich pointed out that Virginia allows the hunting of crows, but only from mid-August through mid-March on four days of the week. (Maryland has a similar season.)
Wrote Rich: “Bottom line, crows are much more vicious than the house sparrow, squirrel and English starlings, and when you need to persuade them the most not to eat baby birds, you cannot do this.”
I imagine one issue may be that the crows have their own chicks to feed this time of year. It’s a nasty business, nature.
The Rooster crows its last
And now for a bird of a different feather ...
In the weeks before the Black Rooster Pub closed for good, Jody Taylor was getting melancholy, thinking about what he would miss most about the bar at 1919 L St. NW that he’d owned since 2009 and worked at for decades before that.
He decided he’d miss the noise. Jody found places that weren’t the Black Rooster just a little too quiet.
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But then a customer told Jody that the Black Rooster wasn’t really going to be silenced. It would live on in the memories of the regulars who went there.
The Black Rooster opened in 1970. In 2009 it came within a few days of closing. It dodged that bullet, but not this one. The lease was finally at its end. The office building’s main tenant — the Peace Corps — is going to be moving out. It didn’t make sense to stick around.
Jody’s son, Jake, is tending bar at the Big Hunt. Jody, 70, is gonna take it easy.
Last Friday — the day before the final farewell — Jody sat on a stool at the Black Rooster’s bar and soaked up that sweetest of sounds: the hubbub of a pub.
Twitter: @johnkelly
For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/people/john-kelly.
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