The timing was absolutely perfect. The orchard, now dug, planted, and mulched; rested in dormant bliss. The meadow, mowed short and raked; was ready for winter. I walked up the hill toward the house, reached into the bucket, and scattered the last wildflower seed upon the ground. My preparations for spring were complete and now I could spend my winter reading in front of the fire. I looked up and watched as the first snowflakes tumbled lazily to the ground. Perfect! As I reached for the door handle, I sensed something amiss. Kind of like the disturbance in the Force that Obi-Wan feels when the planet Alderaan is snuffed out by the Death Star in the first Star Wars movie. I turned. The meadow seemed alive. Its surface writhed under a solid mass of brown. It boiled like some fetid goo melted upon a hot sidewalk.

I screamed, and the birds took flight. The flock numbered in the millions, starlings, I think. Behind them they left nothing but a few rocks and sticks. Everything else, the grass, the plants, the voles, and a hundred bucks worth of wildflower seeds had just taken wing inside their voracious craws. I was left with nothing but barren ground.

I woke up sweating.

This is the stuff that my dreams are made of.

It started so innocently. Oh look, I thought as I opened the unmarked box, a birdfeeder. Next to it was a hummingbird feeder. This is so cool. I got out the feeders, dusted them off and went looking for a place to hang them up.

Thus began my descent into Hell.

This bird-addiction thing is definitely a two-way street. On the face of it, we rationalize that all we’re doing is providing our feathered friends with a bit to eat. Just something to tide them over through the colder months until spring reveals her bounty. In return they provide us with beauty, entertainment, and a feeling of being part of nature, there, just outside the kitchen window. The reality is somewhat darker. The simple fact of the matter is that we are, as usual, interfering with nature. The birds come to need, and eventually demand,our care. We provide a tasty oasis to the sick, hungry, and incompetent; feeding birds which, in the grand scheme of things, should rightly be dead.

But, do you think I can stop? 

What, are you nuts?

They’re just so cute.

And I’m so stupid.

In the box alongside the feeders I also found a bag of sunflower seeds. I filled up the seed feeder with the same and hung it up for the birds to come visit. I put a tasty solution of organic demerara sugar and filtered water into the hummingbird feeder and put it outside next to the other one. I rushed back, grabbed my camera, stood by the window, and waited. 

There would have been more action had I simply thrown a few ice cubes on the ground and watched them melt. For some reason the birds shunned my attempts to lure them into a dependent relationship. They just didn’t want to do the deal.

A couple of weeks later, a bird – a finch, I think it was – got lost and was hopping around on the patio. I snuck outside, trying not to disturb it, and shook some seed from the feeder onto the ground; just to give it an idea where to look. The little brown bird hopped over, dutifully picked up one of the spilled seeds and spit it out. Apparently, these seeds were not to its liking. In the hummingbird feeder, meanwhile, the once-clear mix had gone cloudy and I could see wisps of some biogenic film swimming through the tepid broth.

The birds just weren’t interested.

So, I took down the feeders, dumped out their contents, and returned them to the box.

Yeah, right.

What I really did was go to the store and buy more stuff. (At this point you’re supposed to wonder who here is really the dealer, and who is the addict.) I bought a suet cage and suet. I bought a bag of seed guaranteed to attract songbirds of all varieties. I went to Costco and (along with ten pounds of those nasty little juice things from last week) I bought twenty-five pounds of pure cane sugar. For a potential bird that weighs in at a fifth of an ounce.

Back at the micro-farm the feeders got refilled, the goopy block of suet got locked in its cage and everything got hung back up. I did do something a bit different to entice the hummingbirds: I put up another feeder. This despite knowing that if one doesn’t work at all, then two probably won’t work twice as badly. Or something.

Well, let me tell you. It didn’t. No hummingbirds showed up but several new taxa were discovered in the feeders’ primordial soup as it fermented in the sun. The suet began a slow-motion crawl through the bars of its cage, kept off the ground only by the fact that it spoiled and hardened before it could drip. The seed feeder remained full of seed and empty of birds allowing the spiders to use it as an anchor for one side of their webs. The patio was devoid of birds, save for the chicken on the grill.

Time, as it does, passed. We watched as my effort in feeding the birds turned into abject failure. Then, one day, we noticed that the liquid level in the hummingbird feeder had dropped a bit. The next day, it was down a bit more. At last! Finally, after weeks and weeks of waiting, there was a hummingbird sitting on the feeder. It dipped its delicate beak into the tiny fake flower and drank, then pulled its bill out of the sugar water, licked it clean with its pointy tongue, and drank again. It repeated this sequence until it was full. Its wings blurred as it hovered away from the feeder, and took off.

Then crashed, drunk, into the shrubbery.

The weeks of sitting in the sun had turned the pure, wholesome, sugar-water into some kind of proto-rum. The diminutive fowl weren’t showing up to feed. They were showing up to get hammered. And show up they did.

The neighborhood was home to about six of the little birds – as best as we can tell given that they all pretty much look the same. There were four Anna’s Hummingbirds, a local year-round resident, and two Rufous Hummingbirds, which only spend the summer up here. The Anna’s were an adult pair (admittedly an assumption) along with a juvenile male and a juvenile female. I’m not sure about any relationships but the young male hasn’t been seen lately so maybe it got kicked out of the neighborhood; or eaten.

These jewels of the air were a true delight to watch as they weaved and crashed and zipped about like so many meth-heads with wings. But in addition to being sparkly ballistic nuggets these birds are much more. They are also territorial, mean-spirited, vindictive, and aggressive. Basically a bad attitude wrapped in downy feathers. If one was on a feeder the others would zoom in, chase it away, and harass it until it gave up. Then they’d start chasing each other making this little sound reminiscent of tiny machine guns, like in the Red Baron movies where the guy in back had to crank the machine gun until the British ace sent them spiraling to a flaming death. After the Top-Bird’s position was secure it would return to the feeder and drink its fill.

Then start chasing me.

Imagine a brightly colored, feathery missile with an inch-long spear at the end hurtling towards your eye at sixty miles-per-hour. At the last possible millisecond it veers away, passing close enough that your eyelashes flutter from the breeze in its wake. It stops, in less than a heartbeat, inches behind your head where you can hear the high-frequency thrumming of its wings as it hovers and decides what to do next. It just sits there. Invisible. You spin around to keep an eye on it but it stays exactly behind your head. Waiting to attack.

At this point I usually panic and bolt for the door. The vibrating drone easily keeps pace and just as it is about to strike, salvation streaks out of the blue. A new Top Bird has arrived on the scene and now it chases away all pretenders to secure its domain. In the melee I dash through the door. And lock it behind me. Whew!

All this hummingbird activity has attracted the attention of some other birds in the area which come to check out the excitement. First on the scene are sparrows, followed by juncos, robins, titmice, warblers, thrushes, wrens, vireos, finches, grosbeaks, and chickadees. Not to mention a red-tailed hawk with a taste for vole á la meadow, and a pair of majestic bald eagles.

No, really.

The feeder, which used to go down by one or two seeds a week, now drops by inches in an hour. The first time I bought suet I bought one cake. The second time, I bought a case of sixteen. I think I might need to install a pump to keep up with the hummingbirds.

And that’s how the wild birds domesticated me. It wasn’t my intent. I just wanted to help them get through the upcoming winter. But it’s evolved. It’s no longer about seed and feeders. The micro-farm plan has changed to consist exclusively of plants that birds want to eat. The hummingbirds will love the flowers that were originally intended for the bees. The seed eaters will really appreciate the huge area that will be given over to sunflowers and berries. Now, all that’s left is to keep the birds going until the flowers bloom and the rest of it ripens. 

And hopefully not go bankrupt in the process.