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Blogs by Judith Lawrence
Hummingbirds and Bears 6/12/2011 4:25:59 AM
We are in the midst of the height of the summer escapades of nature here in Muskoka, Canada. And, here, in our own piece of Muskoka forest we have had a lot to watch through our picture windows. Our phoebe pair have hatched their eggs and the babies have grown a lot, so much so, that we can now see their beaks poking out over the edge of the nest even though this year's nest was built very tall and we could hardly see anything at first. I suspect the babies will fledge early this week.
This year the hummingbirds are very numerous much more so than other years. We fill hummingbird feeders with sugar-water and replenish them quite often. This is one of the smallest wild life that we get to see from our windows and they give us a lot of pleasure.
The black bear who went into hibernation all winter came out a few weeks ago. When they come out of hibernation they are pretty hungry and are looking for food of which there isn't much early in the spring.
One bear came along and took down the hummingbird feeder. There's not an awful lot to interest the bear but being so desperately hungry he or she was willing to try anything. However the bear was not impressed and proceeded to destroy the feeder.
Since then we have lost two more feeders, one to a bear and the other to a raccoon, we think. Whatever it was, we were getting very low of feeders for the hummingbirds and as there are so many of them this year they were going through their food very quickly.
We were able to find more feeders at Walmart but they were very small. It's keeping us busy making the food and filling the feeders and putting them out on the line for the birds to feed.
So much activity of wildlife to keep us entertained. From the smallest to the largest and all the in between, we are getting a lot of enjoyment, not to say extra work, out of it all.
