We found the little fella on the training room floor. One of our campers was walking across the floor with her Golden who stopped to sniff something on the mats. A shrill peep from a little hummingbird served notice, probably an exclamation of terror. I scooped him up in my hand and he gave his little shriek again.

The way I understand it a hummingbird burns so much energy when they fly that it’s imperative that the bird have access to a regular source of food. I figure this bird had just run out of energy, either that, or he’d bumped into one of the windows of the building. But he looked pretty exhausted and couldn’t even open his eyes.

I carried him up to the house and popped open my hummingbird feeder. I’d resolved to try to feed him. Some say that you put a pool of nectar in the palm of your hand but that idea didn’t seem very practical to me. So I took a bit of paper towel and sopped it up with the nectar and tickled it against the end of his beak. It took a little moment but I saw his little tongue lick out into the droplet I squeezed to the bottom of the towel; first just little licks and then long and kinda lusty stabs. It’s a funny thing, I think the hummingbird must have a bit of a siphoning action, kind of like a horse taking in water. I could see the sides of his throat pulsing rather like you might do, when guzzling water. After a moment his eyes came open and he perked up. I let him perch on my finger while drinking. And after a bit he regarded me for a moment, then looked around at the sky, and lifted into the air and soared away.

The next day a hummingbird lighted on the rail of the porch next to my chair where I was taking my morning coffee. He watched me for awhile. I’m pretty sure it was the boy I had given the drink. He was of a greenish tint overall, but had a magnificent bib of red. And he is a little short guy, shorter than most of the hummingbirds that frequent the feeder.

He took to visiting the feeder often. Moreover, he has become a vicious defender of the feeder from other hummingbirds. Hummingbirds engage in aerial combat that is clearly quite serious and violent. I guess I’ll have to put up a couple other feeders so that none of these little blokes get hurt.

Traverse City

I’m back from the TDAA judging clinic in Traverse City, MI. As I predicted I had to stop for a nights rest on the way back. The TDAA judging clinic is unique among the agility organizations as we have two days of classroom study followed by two days of trials at which the prospective judges not only get to judge dogs, but this practical experience represents part of the examination to ascertain their experience and composure.

Traverse City is in a beautiful part of the world, way up in the mitt, and just south of Kamchatka. The only downside is the terrible 5 to 600 mile drive from my house, and back. The cost of gasoline alone was over $200. Pine Meadows training center is run by Jane McManus and is pretty much the place to train if you want to do agility in that part of the world. http://www.pinemeadowsfarm.com. Apparently you can board your horse there too!

I took Bogie, Birdie, and Hazard with me. On Saturday I had them entered into the trial just to provide more dogs to be judged. I was getting a heap of blue ribbons (I had to tell them to stop… I typically don’t collect ribbons anywhere). On the second day of the trial I stopped showing my dogs so I could concentrate more on exit interviews with my judges. I did loan out Birdie and Bogie to a couple of the exhibitors in attendance. But they failed to qualify on the day.

On Saturday I believe Hazard set a new all-time record high for scoring in the game Dare to Double (invented by Darlene Woz of Bloomfield Heights, MI)… she scored 7,000+ points. The most I’ve ever heard of before now was more in the 3,000 point range.