First Hummer Of The Season

We had ZERO hummingbirds in the spring. Very disappointing. Donald Ray Burger keeps a log of Houston hummingbird sightings going back to 1993 and when I read that he had his first fall sighting on August 5th I decided to put the feeders out. Today we spotted two hummers. One male and one female, both Ruby-Throated. It was late in the afternoon, but I setup the tripod real quick anyway and caught my first photo.

Hopefully I’ll get some more shots before we head out on vacation. Even better, maybe they’ll still be here when we get back!

The People Have Spoken – Duffy Is Spared

In my previous post about Duffy, the question was asked: “Life or death?” and the majority of you voted to spare the life of Duffy. It was also suggested that we use a humane live trap and capture him and relocate him.

Bowing to the will of the public, we acquired the trap and set it. For the first week we only succeeded in trapping a poor little sparrow which was quickly released. Cynthia was just a little discouraged by the fact that she felt herself being outsmarted by a rodent. She consulted one of the maintenance workers at her office who suggested using a different kind of bait. We had been using cookies, but he suggested nuts and seeds as rodents like to eat food they can hold in their paws.

With this in mind I purchased some more bird seed and baited the trap. At 7:30 Sunday morning Cynthia woke me up exclaiming that we had captured Duffy.

Personally, I could have received this news at a more “humane” hour of the day, say 9:00 or later. But I guess Cynthia’s excitement outweighed all other considerations.

Poor little guy was pretty terrified. Now it was just a matter of finding a place to relocate him. As I mentioned, it was pretty early on a Sunday morning so I figured we’d drive out toward Highway 6 and find a field and let him go. As we were headed down Briar Forest I spotted some commercial construction that backed up to a vacant lot and pulled in. I thought I would drive to the back and release Duffy there.

Imagine my surprise when we spotted a Houston Police cruiser parked back there. I quickly turned around and headed back out. The cop didn’t seem to see us which was a relief. I could imagine explaining to the officer exactly what we were doing.

We found another location next to another vacant lot and released Duffy and headed home.

Cynthia doesn’t think that we actually caught Duffy. She thinks this is another rat altogether. I think it’s Duffy, but the trap is reset and we’ll see if we catch anything else.

*UPDATE*

We need to stop setting the trap during daylight hours