hummingbirds – Go Retire Psychiatrist

The Hummingbird is a Blur!

Yesterday I noticed a hummingbird hovering about the flower pots on our porch. I hurried to get my point and shoot camera and shot video, through a window as usual and it was getting a little late in the evening too, so light was low.

Can I blame the bird for always looking like a blur—or not? Anyway, the video looks similar to others I’ve managed to capture in years past, except this one was the closest I’ve ever gotten to one. I tried messing with the clip using my video editing software, but I ended up believing it best to leave it mostly unmessed around with.

On the other hand, the one I got about 6 years ago was pretty fair for an amateur backyard birder. Same camera, same software although I was closer to the birds and I’m pretty sure I was sitting outside and very patient. They were very interested in our little feeder.

I think the hummingbirds we’ve seen are ruby-throated species partly because that’s the most common in Iowa. Typically, I think it’s just the males who have ruby-colored throats; our visitor didn’t.

I guess the usual way to attract hummingbirds is with a feeder but other people say there are other reasons hummingbirds visit us. More common to the indigenous peoples, they may be thought of as the spirits of those who recently died and are visiting those they were close to.

I don’t remember the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” so well but I’ve glanced briefly at web articles which connect it with hummingbirds, which has something to do with their ability to fly backwards or in a figure 8, maybe connecting that with reverse aging or infinity. Other symbolic connections are with joy, healing, and partnership. There are so many connections they seem to blur together—sort of like the bird itself as it hovers and flits from flower to flower.

I think this hummingbird just really liked Sena’s flowers.

More Reset Woes

It can take a while longer than you expect when you do a system reset of your computer. I’m still trying to get my software reinstalled. You know, it’s not very funny when you get the message that all of your apps are going to be expunged and the long list you see on the screen is followed by the promise that (not to worry) this list will be available on your desktop after the reset, so you don’t have to remember it or try to copy it down.

That’s a bald-faced lie; don’t believe it.

The best example today is my quest to track down the software for my Webcam. Since it got wiped during the reset, I navigated to Logitech’s web support page thinking I would just re-download it from there.

Wrong. The only software listed were updates that either didn’t work, were not applicable for what I wanted to do with them, or were incompatible with my video editing software. No kidding, one of the apps recorded audio but the video editing software could not play the video.

Now I knew that the software for my particular version of the Webcam was old but it worked with Windows 10. None of the other new apps did, which was ironic.

I couldn’t find the old app on Logitech’s site at first. In a roundabout way, by googling and sitting through a YouTube that displayed one of Logitech’s web pages, which was not really obvious at first–I eventually blundered onto Logitech’s web page where I could download the old rickety software. It was at the bottom of a long list of apps only a couple of which were compatible with Windows 10.

But it worked with my video editing software and, unlike the new software, didn’t give me annoying messages in big red letters suggesting that my nearly new computer didn’t have the resources to run it.

I like the Webcam part of making videos because it allows me to do things like put my talking head into a PowerPoint presentation, like the one below:

I realize that’s work-related and I’m supposed to be retiring. However, just before I did all that hunting for the old Webcam software, I had been out in the yard with my wife, me trimming the edges of the lawn while she mowed. I also applied grub control granules with a drop spreader. That’s actually about just as much exercise as a moderate jog around the block.

Finally, the explanation for the picture of the hummingbird feeder above. Today we retired it, which fits the theme of my life in a way. For one thing, it’s a pain to fill that thing with sugar water (which I have to mix each and every time, 4:1 water to sugar).

The other problem are the pesky carpenter ants which climb all over it. I know there are ways to prevent that–sort of. On the other hand, hummingbirds have to deal with them all the time in nature, don’t they?

How do hummingbirds usually defend themselves against ants, anyway? Maybe they need to take martial arts classes. They could also use their brains, which proportionally are larger than ours, by the way. They’re smart enough to come up with a clever argument to persuade ants to scram: “It has been documented in numerous scientific studies that sugar water makes ants explode.”

Our hummingbird feeder is now just another decorative object in the garden.

Our Garden So Far

Short post again today in view of the Memorial Day holiday. However, the mood is light here today as Sena adds Gomphrena to our garden. It’s an annual that will attract hummingbirds, like the feeders.

It rained this morning and she got caught in it. She just stayed out there, planting flowers. I stayed dry, trying again to catch videos of hummingbirds through the window.

More hummingbirds…they drink and they fly.

Hummingbird Adventure

It was a long day so this is a short post. It’s different from other long days in that my wife and I had fun besides doing all the yard work.

Sena got the hummingbird feeders (3) and I mixed the sugar water since I need all the practice I can get regarding cooking. It’s 4 parts water to 1 part sugar.

We’ve got Columbine flowers in our garden and that helps attract hummingbirds.

I’m pooped. That’s all I got.

Hummingbirds think my sugar water recipe is bangin’, dog!

Looking for Hummingbirds

My wife and I are trying to attract hummingbirds this weekend. This is a new project for us. She got a couple of feeders and some nectar we mixed with water and a little beer. No, I’m kidding; we wouldn’t try to get any hummingbirds drunk.

One of the feeders is pretty fancy. You know, it sort of looks like an upside-down beer bottle–just sayin’.

I’ve tried to get snapshots and videos of hummingbirds before. They’re usually pretty blurry and jittery, just like the birds.

We’re hoping that the flowers will help lure them to our garden.

They probably don’t care for Allium; it’s in the onion family.

We’ve got a garden ornament that might help draw them. And as long as our garden goonbird (a well-known cryptid) behaves and doesn’t scare them off–we might see the little guzzlers in a few days.