Alternative twitter feed

October 15, 2017 1:48 PM

A livestream of hummingbirds, along with wasps and the occasional woodpecker, coming and going from a feeder somewhere in West Texas.
posted by daisystomper (9 comments total)

Cornell Lab, I love ya. But now we need an alternate Mastodon feed of an elephant gathering place :)
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:09 PM on October 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

Fort Davis is so cool. If you are ever in the Area of Big Bend, be sure to stop in. The post is amazingly well preserved (and the birds are pretty good too.)
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:21 PM on October 15, 2017

I had a hummingbird get inside my place the other day. No idea how it got inside.

It woke me up by cheeping at me angrily and tapping on the windows, sparking some weird dream that, no surprise, involved a tiny angry bird zipping around the room until I woke up to realize I wasn't dreaming at all, and there was actually a tiny angry bird zipping around the room.

The thing I remember is that it wasn't panicked at all or crashing about and flying into things. It was very intelligently flying up to the two available windows, landing and pecking and tapping at the glass and calmly (but angrily!) looking for a way to get out.

But between window taps it was alighting near my bed and chirping and cheeping directly at me and even kind of dive-bombing near my head to make loud hummingbird noises.

I went over and opened the outside door and it immediately went over and landed near it to walk/hop along a ledge to the top of the open door to inspect the route or whatever, turned and chirped at me angrily a couple more times before dive-bombing out the door.

There was none of that crashing about you get when, say, a sparrow or something gets inside and starts distressingly crashing into the walls and windows in a sheer panic.

Nope, that hummingbird knew exactly where it was and if anything it was lashing out at me because it couldn't believe it was so stupid to get lost and not be able to get back out without asking for help from some slow, stupid monkey.
posted by loquacious at 2:22 PM on October 15, 2017 [24 favorites]

Thanks, OP. I am moving from a hummingbird-rich area to a place with no hummingbirds. This site will make the move easier.
posted by Bella Donna at 3:22 PM on October 15, 2017

So great, thanks for posting! I think I caught a fleeting glimpse of one today at the botanic garden; always exciting.
posted by ferret branca at 5:03 PM on October 15, 2017

If only it were legal to keep them as pets!
posted by karmachameleon at 9:17 PM on October 15, 2017

I just tuned in and I was surprised to see them letting each other eat in peace. The ones on the back porch I'm most familiar with will relentlessly dive bomb one another to keep each other off the feeder. It's extremely entertaining. Up until I saw that I always wondered why people bothered with hummingbird feeders. When I'd hung them in the past I never seemed to see any hummingbirds.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:02 PM on October 17, 2017

Just wanted to add that I watched for almost an hour right before sunset and I did get to see some good jousting and diving. Thanks so much for posting this.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:03 PM on October 17, 2017

They're quite active in the morning, too, plus I saw two woodpeckers at once yesterday!
posted by daisystomper at 8:30 PM on October 17, 2017