Warning: Image not for the faint of heart

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We are in Minnesota! We are visiting my sister and her husband and furr children this week.
There was a whole lotta car knitting on the way Up. On with the shawl. I am calling my own pattern the Pretend Friend Shawl. IN honor of you all. You folks.

Here's the thing.. We arrived and marveled at the hummingbirds at my sister's feeder. After a garden tour, that was amazing and included:
lung wort, or pulmonaria
Dead nettle or lamium
spider wort
Astible
river birch
Maggie Daley astilbe or false spirea
and on and on....

well, so we get back to the porch and there are 2 male hummers on the ground. One is nearly dead and one is most sincerely dead. Okay all you buddies, give us some blah blah about circle of life or it being some rare great sign........we were mortified. .....
Do male hummers fight? They were right in front of a large picture window.....

So we sent fireman out to assess. The nearly dead took off! The sincerley dead did not.
So he got 3 bells rung 3 times, Firefighter salute, and got pitched into the woods.

So what does this dead hummingbird mean???????

Comments

Nancy said…
Hummingbirds are very territorial. It appears that one won, and the other lost.

The shawl is looking good.
7:06 PM
Beverly said…
Didn't know that. We never see more than one at a time around here.
8:28 PM
SissySees said…
We use signal 5-5-5 here, but I assume the meaning is the same - final call?
8:35 PM
Sarah said…
I was going to say what Nancy said..they are VERY TERRITORIAL!

Where in MN did you go? I am originally from Buffalo (outside of Minneapolis) and am taking my kids to the Duluth area in August...might even drive to Thunder Bay, Ontario just for the fun of it.
9:31 PM
kathy b said…
Channon

IT was 5-5-5 I got it wrong> Oh dear. I dont know what I did by ringing 3-3-3. Hmmmm. Little bird, little bells?
8:40 AM
Celia said…
Maybe the birds were fighting over a pretty girl. That's usually how they get hurt.

Nice knitting you are getting done while in the car.
9:35 AM
Rogue Butterfly said…
Hummingbirds seems so peaceable when observed alone, but they are capable of some of the fiercest dogfights; they put actual pilots to shame. We always have to hang up multiple feeders in different parts of the yard to keep the different factions apart.
9:53 AM
Anonymous said…
Awwwwwwwww...poor hummers. :-( But, everyone is right. They do fight.

You wouldn't think it of such little birds, but they are AGGRESSIVE!
9:54 AM
Katherine said…
Our Hummers fly into our window all the time. We have joked about them having bad eyesight! I have never seen them fight. In fact, we have seen several of them hover around feeding hummingbirds as if standing guard until they finish feeding and then they fly off together. I'd bet this is a window slaughter!
10:51 AM
Marguerite said…
How sad. It probably means they were playing hummingbird tag and flew into the window.
11:14 AM
Kim said…
My guess is that they flew into the window and knocked themselves out. I had that happen at a house I moved into. It was terrible - they flew into the house if I left the french doors open, and were kind of like giant bees at the windows trying to get out, or they flew into the outsides of the windows. Until the windows got dirty. But I did have to put one in a shoebox with a dishtowel for a while, then he recovered and flew away.

-Kim.
1:58 PM
Alyssa said…
Male hummingbirds are really mean! I think they have a complex, you know, because they're so small. They could've gotten into a fight, or both of them just flew into the windows, thinking that it was an enemy.
10:25 AM
Beth said…
It's possible they were in a state of torpor (like brief hibernation). Hummingbirds have such high metabolic needs that they nearly shut down to rest. See http://girlscientist.blogspot.com/2005/09/hummingbirds-and-torpor.html
11:59 PM
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