Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Hummingbirds in the Jardin

 
It is very dry here in Guanajuato. Birds flock to our bird bath and bees desperate for water seek out any puddle from our sloppy plant watering. All of the nearby creeks and rivers are bone dry and everything is waiting for the season to break, for the rain to begin and for the brown of the countryside to turn lush and emerald again. 
The hummingbirds are particularly thick right now. I suppose they are concentrated to anything wet, and that there are some additional birds coming through on their migrations.
 
We have in the past had a great deal of difficulty here feeding hummingbirds this time of years as the bees swarm so thickly around the feeders that the hummingbirds can't get near the feeders. The bees even crawl inside of the feeders through the too large feeding tubes and totally clog up the feeders.
 
Our friends Janet and Ron brought us a wonderful gift on their last trip down from Canada. It was the hummingbird feeder shown in the video. It has a special feature, bee guards - the little yellow cages over the feeding tubes. They work beautifully as you can see in the video. Makes us want to shout with joy, but I employed Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee to do it for me! Woo Hoo!