The Birds and the Beasts Were There

by Margaret Millar

  He also sold me a hopper-type seed dispenser and a humming­bird feeder which I was instructed to fill with a half-honey, half-water mixture boiled for ten minutes to kill the bacteria that would hasten fermentation. The bottle also had to be cleaned and the mixture renewed every second or third day to prevent the stuff turning into liquor and intoxicating the hummingbirds. Drunken­ness, he hinted, was commoner among birds than most temperance-oriented bird lovers cared to admit.

  Since that first talk with Harry I’ve seen a number of examples of intemperance—a flock of robins who’d gorged themselves on overripe pyracantha berries and were reeling around on a lawn like tumbleweed, and house finches tame as tulips after a feast of rot­ting peaches. Every winter I’ve watched a sapsucker imbibing fermented sap he’d tapped himself from a willow tree and trying to protect his source of supply from a thirsty and determined oriole. On a recent occasion I was nearly run down by a boozy bunch of waxwings who had arrived later than usual when the toyon berries were past their prime. But I have yet to see any drunken humming­birds. Perhaps they are indistinguishable from sober ones.

  It was eight thirty and nearly dark by the time I finished arrang­ing everything according to Harry’s instructions. The pedestal bird bath was placed in the middle of the lower terrace at a safe distance from shrubbery that would lend cover to lurking cats. With the aid of a notched stick and some wire, I suspended a length of hose over the bath and left the water turned on just enough to provide a slight drip.

  It didn’t look very attractive, but I have long since discovered that birds and people frequently have opposite views about what is attractive. The tidy gardener will abhor the patch of weeds that is irresistible to the goldfinch. He will hasten to haul away the pile of brush where the wren finds its spider, the thrush its worm, the towhee its shelter. He will arrange to burn the stump where the bluebird nests and the woodpecker hunts for caterpillar larvae. He will use quantities of insecticide to get rid of mosquitoes while he simultaneously drives away their arch enemy, the cliff swallow, by knocking down its mud nest under the eaves in order to preserve the neatness of his house. He will not stand the sight of a tree skeleton, yet it is at just such a skeleton, the bare bones of an old blue gum eucalyptus standing at the west end of our property, where Ken and I have seen more species of birds than any other one place. Almost all the birds use it: for a lookout, as a place torest, to meet, to court, to preen, to study the surrounding country, to watch for hawks, to converse, to sleep in the sun. The gardener who prides himself on his neatness pays heavily, and usually unwittingly, for his pride. Birds will be uncomfortable in his yard just as a human being is uncomfortable in the house of a perfectionist.

  The hummingbird feeder I hung on the porch, with a couple of fuchsia blossoms taped near the tube to attract their interest. This feeder was discovered and taken over by a hummingbird the fol­lowing morning. Such quick success is the exception rather than the rule and I attribute it not to the fuchsia blossom but to the fact that a neighbor up the street, Adelaide Garvin, had been feeding hummers for years. She kept eight containers of honey and water on her patio all year, so it seems likely that every hummer for miles around was well accustomed to them.

  Mrs. Garvin had started out, one winter several years before, with a single feeder which was in due course discovered by a male Anna’s hummingbird, the only species which is a permanent re­sident in our area. For a brief time things went smoothly, with Mrs. Garvin enjoying her guest and the hummer enjoying her hospitality. Then a second male Anna appeared on the scene. There was plenty of room in the garden for both of them, plenty of flowers to provide them with insects, and they could have lived harmoniously side by side, taking turns at the feeder. But if there’s one thing a hummingbird can’t stand it’s the sight of another hummingbird eating. To him a feeder is merely another flower and he knows by instinct that a flower fades and there is an end of honey. To share it would be like a farmer sharing a well he knows is going dry—bad business as well as against nature.

  Mr. Anna One welcomed the stranger with a vigorous and noisy frontal attack. The stranger, Mr. Anna Two, reciprocated in kind. And so it went, day after day. From the first feeble light of morn­ing these tiny iridescent patches of rose-red plunged and dove and zoomed and dipped and hovered, and the air was filled with their excited sounds of combat, tick tick tick—tick tick—tick tick tick tick tick . . . It was like listening to a battle between a pair of deranged flying clocks.

  While no blood was shed, no clear-cut victory was won either, and the battle simply went on. Neither of the gladiators was ever allowed more than a few seconds at the feeder and Mrs. Garvin began to be afraid that they were going to starve to death and she would be responsible. She was at the point of taking down the feeder and forgetting the whole thing when she read in a magazine about a situation similar to hers. The solution, it seemed, was to place a second feeder, at some distance from and out of sight of the other, on the assumption that if each bird had its own feeder, peace would prevail. Mrs. Garvin, delighted at the prospect of such an easy solution, hastened to buy another feeder and put it up at the opposite end of the patio, hidden from the first by a giant yucca.

  Mr. Anna One spotted the new feeder immediately. Before Mrs. Garvin even had a chance to fill it he was over, investigating, touching it with his beak and tasting it with his tongue, which was as long and quick and delicate as a snake’s. This maneuver left the first feeder unoccupied and Mr. A II lost no time using his oppor­tunity. It was probably his first—and positively his last—uninter­rupted session at any feeder. Dining alone had certain obvious advantages, but A II evidently felt that they were outweighed by the excitements of combat because within a couple of minutes he went off in search of A I. They met at the new feeder just as Mrs. Garvin was in the act of filling it.

  The ensuing fight lasted for the balance of the afternoon. A I would take a sip of honey water, then fly back to his perch on a twig about six feet away, moving his head constantly from side to side so as not to miss the approach of any trespassers on his new property. At this point A II would zoom out of ambush and take a hasty swig before being driven off. Then he would swoop back across the patio to the original feeder. Suspecting just such skul­duggery, A I would immediately follow him, ticking so fast and furiously he seemed ready to explode like a time bomb. Back and forth between the feeders the two birds went, until dusk forced them to seek cover for the night.

  In her quest for peace Mrs. Garvin had merely intensified the war and enlarged the battlefield. She was, naturally, disappointed but she was also beginning to get curious: what would happen if she put up a third feeder? Was it possible that the birds actually enjoyed fighting and were merely using the feeders as an excuse?

  In order to prevent A I and A II from spying on her activities, she waited until the following night to place a third feeder in the arbutus tree at the other side of the house where it was almost completely concealed by the dense leaves. She had even left the formula uncolored and merely painted the end of the feeding tube with red nail polish. Though I have found that this works perfectly well, I still go on using the colored stuff. It looks prettier.

  Both male Annas were much too occupied to go exploring. A neglected girlfriend, however, often has plenty of time to kill, and one of these was browsing in the arbutus, sticking her beak into the tiny, white bell-shaped flowers, when she discovered the feeding tube. If she had had any sense she would have kept her find to herself and enjoyed a little security. But she couldn’t resist the urge to brag to the male and lord it over him. She had no reason to spare his feelings; the previous spring, after a spectacular kiss-and-run affair, he had left her to face the consequences, a pair of twins, and raise them all by herself.

  It was the beginning of February when Miss Anna discovered her feeder. At the same time, unfortunately, a male Allen’s hum­mingbird arrived in the arbutus tree after a winter vacation in Mexico. He was tired
and hungry after his long journey and even under the best of circumstances he is not noted for his placid disposition. Buzzing his wings, fanning his brown-red tail and squeaking vigorously at Miss Anna, he ordered her to get lost. Miss Anna retaliated with a thrust of her bill and a series of enraged tick tick ticks, which attracted the attention not only of A I and A II but of Mrs. Garvin as well.

  She witnessed the ensuing four-way fight but it was such a bed­lam of noise and color and speed in and out of the arbutus tree and around and around the house, that it was impossible to declare a winner. It was, however, quite obvious which bird had been de­feated: the lower half of A I’s bill was now at a 90 ° angle to the upper half. He appeared so pitifully wounded that Mrs. Garvin was in an agony of remorse for having started the whole thing.

  Among most wild creatures the custom is for the defeated to shrink away and lick his wounds in hiding. A I evidently didn’t think much of this custom. Instead of stealing quietly away, he became even more pugnacious, and while his broken bill may have looked pitiful to Mrs. Garvin, to the other hummingbirds it ap­peared more formidable with its double thrust. In fact, his injury wasn’t actually very serious. It did not, for instance, interfere with his eating since he did that with his tongue, which was protected quite satisfactorily by the upper bill. In time, his lower bill atro­phied and fell off and he grew a new one in much the same way as we grow a new fingernail.

  A I may have lost the battle but he won the war. He became, at least temporarily, the undisputed owner of the original feeder.

  Hummingbirds mate as they live, with great speed and intensity. In our part of California, courtship begins as early as December for the Annas, February for the Allens.

  I kept a daily record of a pair of Allen hummers who arrived at the beginning of February, 1965: the male on the 3rd, the female two days later. Courtship began immediately. On February 8, I watched the female gathering material for her nest from one of the wicker cornucopias I had filled with cotton balls and hung in a tree. She was a dainty little freckle-faced creature, most meticulous about what went into her nest. If she pulled out a piece of cotton which she considered too large, she promptly spit it out. If it wasn’t large enough she added to it until it was exactly right.

  On March 10, thirty days after I first observed Mrs. Allen gathering cotton, I learned by chance that she had completed her mission. Looking out at a dead ceanothus tree, I observed what I thought were two female Allen’s hummingbirds sitting on adjoin­ing twigs, each peacefully minding her own business. This was such an unlikely situation that I went running to get my binoculars. They told the story: in the center of each white throat a small red spot was revealed. As the weeks passed, these spots would enlarge until they became the flaming orange-red throats of the male Al­len’s hummingbird. The two peace-loving “ladies” on adjoining twigs were Mrs. Allen’s fine young twin sons, who hadn’t yet been introduced to the joys of combat.

  Of the 319 known species of hummingbird, in only one is the male believed to help with the incubation and raising of his family. Some hummingbird admirer had tried to explain this male absen­teeism with the theory that if the male hung around the nest his brilliant beauty would draw too much attention to it and so en­danger the young. I find it difficult to subscribe to this. Few birds are more conspicuously beautiful than the males of the hooded oriole and the black-headed grosbeak, both of whom are devoted fathers. Perhaps the real answer lies in the nature of the female hummer. She needs no help from anyone in looking after her family. I’ve watched her rout sparrow hawks, harass crows and drive off turkey vultures. The only opponent really worthy of her is another female hummingbird.

  The third week of March also brought the first wave of migrating rufous hummingbirds on their way to the breeding grounds further north. The rufous shares with Allen the scientific name Selasphorus, flame-bearer, but it is even more applicable to him. During the five or six weeks the members of his family frequented our yard, we used to see them shooting through the trees and bushes like tiny balls of fire, so bright they hurt the eyes. Although they used our feeders and fought over them, they never took possession of one the way the Anna, Allen and black-chinned hummers did. Perhaps they knew they were just transients and could not afford to linger, no matter how sweet the honey.

  Before the rufous hummers had finished migrating through our area, the black-chins began arriving to spend the spring and summer, nearly always within sight of a sycamore tree. The down on the underside of sycamore leaves was their favorite nest-building material; I’ve never seen a black-chin use the cotton which I provided and which seemed to please the other breeding hummers.

  The courtship of these tiny creatures with the white-and-violet bibs involves the technique, used by other members of the family, of lightning-fast ascents and descents before the watching female. The black-chin has added something of its own to the mating ritual. While the female waits in a shrub or small tree, the male begins swinging rapidly and noisily back and forth in front of her like a pendulum, a performance intended to bedazzle his lady. It is not intended to bedizzy the human observer, but that’s the effect it has.

  The hummingbird characteristic which I find irresistible is its fearlessness. When I went out into their territory they not only showed no fear of me, they ignored my presence altogether except as an object that was in their way. I might have been a short tree or a tall stump. They shot past my nose, skimmed my ear lobes, wheeled round and round my head like animated corkscrews while I dodged and ducked. If I had on red nail polish they touched it with their bills to make sure it wasn’t a rare flower or a new type of feeder. One of their favorite targets was a sweater of mine which had strawberries embroidered around the collar. It was, at first, an unnerving experience to be prodded on the back of the neck by a hummingbird.

  The hopper-type feeder Harry had sold me I nailed to the main trunk of a young blue gum eucalyptus. This location was convenient to the drip bath I’d arranged on the lower terrace. But it had a serious disadvantage not apparent at the beginning—blue gums grow at a great clip. The feeder is halfway to heaven by this time and utilized only as a perch for sleepy doves to sun on. We’re still asked some rather naive questions about why we put a feeder up so high and how we put seed in it, and so on. The full explanation we used to offer has been minimized with the passing of the years: “Trees grow.”

  And so began my initial week of bird watching. While my hus­band was in Mexico, I entered an even more foreign and more fascinating world. No day began soon enough or lasted long enough. The field guides were never closed, the binoculars never returned to their case. Letters from Ken arrived and I would just be sitting down to answer them when some bird would fly past the window and I’d be off, perhaps only as far as the porch or the driveway, perhaps completely around the block.

  The dogs always followed me on these excursions. They were well aware of my preoccupation, and they resented it and took a stand against it in the only way they knew how. Whenever our little caravan paused long enough, they staged a fight to attract my attention.

  But all three of our dogs eventually became bird watchers. The davenport in front of the picture window facing the front yard was their favorite lookout. This window always bore evidence of their new hobby. At the bottom were the noseprints of Johnny, the Scottish terrier; a few inches above, the prints of Rolls Royce, the cocker spaniel; and a foot or so above these, Brandy, the German shepherd, left his unmistakable traces. The birds very quickly took stock of the dogs and judged them harmless. Right outside our back door, in a cotoneaster tree, I hung a plastic sunflower-seed feeder. When I opened this door to let the dogs out, the birds simply went on eating, but if they caught sight of me they flew away.

  Occasionally I am asked what difference bird watching has made in my life. I can only repeat, the days don’t begin quickly enough, and never last long enough, and the years go by too soon.

  3

 
Wzschthub

  Ten days after Houdunit and I met beside the hubcap, my husband returned from Mexico. His plane, delayed by fog, didn’t land until nearly midnight, so that it was too late for me to explain the considerable changes which had taken place in our household during his absence. One of the most im­portant of these was my enrollment at the University of California at Santa Barbara for a two-week field course in bird identification. Registration and orientation had taken place the previous day at the Museum of Natural History, whose ornithologist, Egmont Rett, was our instructor. The first class was to meet at seven thirty the next morning at Goleta Slough, an area of tidal mud flats and shallow ponds and inlets.

  I got up at five o’clock with the idea of doing some observing before the others arrived. I hadn’t yet tried to identify any shore birds. I only knew, from reading the Peterson guide, that they weren’t going to be easy.

  I fed the dogs, and then, over a cup of hot tea, I wrote a note to leave for my husband:

  Dear Ken:

  Gone to class, will be back sometime this afternoon. Don’t eat the grapes in refrigerator or the doughnuts in bread box.

  Leave living room drapes closed at front and open be­side my chair. Go very slowly past this window or else crawl past so you won’t disturb them.

  Love,

  MM

  Birds had so quickly and easily become an integral part of my life that it simply didn’t occur to me that Ken might wonder what the class was about, why the grapes and doughnuts were out of bounds, and who “them” referred to. (He told me later he won­dered a great deal when he read my message, not about grapes or doughnuts, but about marbles, whether some of mine had been lost.)