Date: 09/16/2009

Number: 1

Yesterday 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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