Tales from the Bird Sanctuary: Frantic Hummingbirds

Colorado weather is always unpredictable. There’s a saying, that is you don’t like the weather in Colorado, just wait twenty minutes, and having lived in Colorado for all of my life, I can say that it is usually true. But this year, we had an unseasonal snow storm on May 21-22, and my area was hit hard. We got at least 24 inches of wet, heavy snow, which left me temporarily snowbound, and confused all the plants in my garden, like my rose, day lilies and lilac bushes, which already had new growth showing. The plants weren’t the only ones confused. After all, the previous week, the temperatures were in the seventies. I was a little confused myself. All the birds who visit the bird sanctuary and the hummingbirds, which have been in the area since April 18th this year, were absolutely frantic.

The snow began falling on the evening of the 20th, and the trees were already drooping low by 10 p.m. As I went to shut my generator off, It sounded like the trees were alive with the little twitts of hummingbirds. They should have been all tucked into their nests by that time of night, but for some reason, they were all perched in the tree branches griping about the weather. I believe that many of these tiny birds were just passing through and the snow stranded them, but for whatever reason, I could tell by the sound that there were a lot of them in those trees.

Hummingbirds are migratory and they fly great distances every year from South America all the way up to the northern regions of the United States. It’s really quite amazing how far these tiny travelers commute. What they don’t do is fly in the dark, at least not usually, but on that night, I must have startled one of them, because I actually got buzzed. At 10 o’clock at night, that is unheard of.

The next morning, I awoke to about a foot of snow and everything was covered in white, and at 5:30 in the morning, the hummingbirds were frantically fighting to get nectar from partially frozen feeders.

Hummingbirds consume mass amounts of food in order to maintain their high metabolisms. In situations where the food supplies are limited for some reason, like a surprise snow storm, they can find a perch and go into a torpor state to conserve its energy reserves, but for some reason, these hummingbirds remained frantically feeding all day.

I placed a fresh feeder under the porch where it would be sheltered for them, in order to up their food supplies. But, it was so cold that even that feeder was soon partially frozen. That didn’t stop them from feeding from it though. Below is a video I took from inside my cabin. My front porch was busy like this all day long. If nothing else, they provided good entertainment on a day when I was stuck indoors.

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Kaye Lynne Booth lives, works, and plays in the mountains of Colorado. With a dual emphasis M.F.A. in Creative Writing and a M.A. in Publishing, writing is more than a passion. It’s a way of life. She’s a multi-genre author, who finds inspiration from the nature around her, and her love of the old west, and other odd and quirky things which might surprise you.

She has short stories featured in the following anthologies: The Collapsar Directive (“If You’re Happy and You Know It”); Relationship Add Vice (“The Devil Made Her Do It”); Nightmareland (“The Haunting in Carol’s Woods”); Whispers of the Past (“The Woman in the Water”); Spirits of the West (“Don’t Eat the Pickled Eggs”); and Where Spirits Linger (“The People Upstairs”). Her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets, and her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, are both available in both digital and print editions at most of your favorite book distributors.

When not writing, she keeps up her author’s blog, Writing to be Read, where she posts reflections on her own writing, author interviews and book reviews, along with writing tips and inspirational posts from fellow writers. In addition to creating her own very small publishing house in WordCrafter Press, she offers quality author services, such as editing, social media & book promotion, and online writing courses through WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services. As well as serving as judge for the Western Writers of America and sitting on the editorial team for Western State Colorado University and WordFire Press for the Gilded Glass anthology and editing Weird Tales: The Best of the Early Years 1926-27, under Kevin J. Anderson & Jonathan Maberry.

In her spare time, she is bird watching, or gardening, or just soaking up some of that Colorado sunshine.

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