Big changes coming soon

At 05:30 AM it was 54 degrees. I do bible study at the church and when I arrived I heard the boiler kick on.

 

Shut that boiler off! we're still running two AC's.

 

We usually start burning in the wood stove on the 15 of September, it looks like we'll start later this year.

I do think we'll put some wood in near the end of next week.

 

It was 48* yesterday morning (4am). Nice brisk morning ride into work.

 

I have a rough estimate of 50 of the little hummers feeding at my place. I'm afraid one day I'm going to get one of their beaks stuck in my head or something with their chasing each other. Had one make it through my picket fence, but the chaser wasn't so lucky. He hit one of the pickets and flew slowly back to one of the feeders and sat there at least a hour before resuming it's antics.

Right now it seems like a constant battle for the feeders and I'm refilling them every other day now. I never really noticed before, but they really are fattening up. They look like miniature turkeys, they're getting so fat!

I'll have to look up the formula for determining the numbers of hummingbirds one might have by the amount of sugar water they go though. I can say you probably have a lot more than 5!

 

I've noticed acorns starting to fall already, which seems a bit early. I had three bounce off me while cutting the grass earlier today, and walking barefoot in the backyard is pretty painful.

I plan on having a campfire tonight and the fire pit is surrounded by oak trees, with the center of the pit being close to ground zero. Maybe I should have brought my hard hat with me....

 

Due to the drought our maples are turning red already, but they have been doing that now for a few weeks. Everything is stressed.

 

Our's have started to move out, lesser numbers daily now. Will be interesting to see how long they stay. Normally gone totally by mid September.

 

I can send you some Presque Isle County acorns if you'd like. There are plenty up this way.

 

The hummers in my area are usually gone by the end of September though there was one last year I thought for sure was going to overwinter here. He stayed until the end of October. Usually starting in early September, I like to up the sugar ratio to 1 part sugar to 3 parts water to help with the migration, and if any do decide to stay late or even overwinter.

I've also noticed a few newbies passing through, probably from the north, the last few days.

To get a general idea of how many hummers y'all have, multiply what you see by 6. I'd give the formula based on what they consume, but it varies from one type of hummer to the next. One may consume .25 ounce of nectar daily while another might consume up to .45 ounce daily. So to keep it simple, multiply what you see at one time by 6 and it should be fairly close.

 

We won't start burning till late Oct. We like the cool weather for sleeping. And as you know, once it starts, it's game on for 6 months. I'm still thinking about all the c/s/s I still gotta do once the heat breaks, to think about burning.