Hummer time

Lee has pulled out all her hummingbird feeders to prepare for the hummingbird season. They using show up May 1st, but she has seen them as early as the 27th of April.
Lee starts with a couple of feeders partially filled for the early male arrivals. By the end of May all the feeders will be up and full and she will be going through that pitcher everyday sometimes feeding as much as a gallon of syrup a day.
Males come first and stake out the territory. The females will come a couple weeks later. The sound of them zooming past our heads like bottle rockets lets us know winter is definitely behind us.
Many of the camps have trouble with the bears stealing their feeders. I think the sound of dogs inside the cabin keeps that problem away from us. The bears are out catching up on eating. The bears love to get into any bird seed or garbage they can find. It seems when they find a good source of food they will often mark an area by scratching on a tree, post, or cabin. This doesn't make cabin owners too happy. I solved the problem at one camp by putting up electric fence on a corner the bear liked to destroy. Not feeding the bears or birds really cuts back on this activity. I will let you know when we spot the first hummingbird as two feeders are going up today.