I took this cute little movie with my pocket camera, then had a devil of a time trying to post it because, evidently, it was recorded in the finest, highest resolution HD (who knew that little son-of-a-gun was so high tech?) The file for the one-minute movie was so huge, I couldn't load it into any program on my computer that could edit it.
Finally, I uploaded it to youtube (this took twenty minutes) so I could post it on Facebook.
And after all that work and worry, none of my Facebook friends looked at it or commented. Sigh!
Oh well. So I'm posting it here, if only so that I can get my hands (eyes) on it quickly when I want to look at it. Because I really like it.
I've witnessed the aerial dogfights that erupt between these two species when the rufous hummingbirds arrive back in town every year. As a rule, the poor Anna's males--who have enjoyed free reign over my feeders for the entire long, cold winter--are rudely browbeaten away from the feeders by male rufies every spring. The (smaller!) new arrival will station himself on a tree branch where he can keep an eye on any action going on around the glass bottle. When another bird enters the picture, the little hellion swooops in, and with loud buzzing and chattering and aerial acrobatics, drives him away.
This year, apparently, the Anna's males have been shooting testosterone or something, because they are not being cowed by the antics of the frenetic newcomers. In the video, our little Anna's male sits there calmly and continues to sip, exuding an attitude of, "If you're very polite, I'll LET you share my feeder..."
To see these two feeding rather chummily is kind of like watching the lion lie down with the lamb.
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