Date: 09/16/2009

Number: 1

Hey, Rockport, Texas...Heads Up, most of our Chappell Hill Hummers left town on a fresh NW tailwind this AM after chugging a hearty breakfast. There's a TON of 'em and they'll be ravenous. 'Course as sweet-natured as they all are, I'm sure they'll be nice and patient.

OK, I'll try giving you a rough count and explain how I arrived at it.
This morning, the heaviest-feeding morning, I had out 7, 1-quart feeders, each feeder having 8 feeder holes. When all holes are single-occupied, that's obviously 56 birds calmly feeding. "Calmly" doesn't happen at my feeders when there's two or more birds present. At breakfast and supper time, there's usually two, and sometimes three birds at each feeder hole...so I estimated that at any given moment, there are (2.5 birds per hole, times 56 holes)...that's about 140 ravenous lil' dudes piggin' out at one time. Then looking beyond all them feeding birds, I tried to estimate the number of flying, hovering, diving, chirping, squeaking, squawling birds who would often fly in and sit on the back of a feeding bird...this number came out to be 60 birds...(just because it tied in nicely with that 140 number)...to produce a round number of 201. (Don't try to understand it, just enjoy.)
I refilled those 7, 1-qt. feeders twice a day with a total of 14 quarts of sugar water...that's 3.5 gallons per day. Most of this bunch left right after breakfast on Wed. (Sept. 16.), heading South on a fresh NW tailwind...bound for Rockport, Texas, then across the Gulf on that long flight to Yucatan. Sure hope Yucatan is ready for this bunch. I won't miss all of them since we have a permanent resident bird who has wintered with us for the last ten years. We don't have many freezes, but what we've had, he has somehow weathered them all. We call him "The Guard" and that's what he does with that one feeder we have had to leave out for him year-round.

Bill

Chappell Hill, TX

Latitude: 30.2 Longitude: -96.2

Observed by: Bill
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