Each year for the past several years, just like the swallows who came back to Capistrano, humming birds have been coming back to the home of Country Boy in Runge. And so it was this year also. This time it was Mama Country Boy who welcomed the annual callers. On the morning of March 23, she looked out the patio door, let out a squeal and loudly announced, "They’re back!"

And like any dedicated bird-watcher, we went dashing into the family room, and were delighted to see three humming birds flying against the doors and otherwise showing their displeasure that the feeder was not filled and hanging in placed to greet their arrival.

Mama and her helper assistant, Aurora, immediately sprang into action. One of them mixed up a pretty heady concoction, which, for the most part, consisted of sugar and water. The other took the bird feeder out of the "mothballs" and gave it a good scrubbing down. Then, they filled the feeder with a liberal amount of sugar water, afterwards taking it out on the patio and suspending it from the overhang of the roof.

Satisfied with the project thus far, they retired back inside the house and positioned themselves so they could watch activities (i.e. meandering humming birds) unfolding on the patio. Their faith was well founded. Within the matter of a few minutes, one of the small creatures came zooming in for a perfect landing on the feeder bottle, only to be foiled moments later by the other two scouts who positioned themselves perfectly to take on a "cargo of fuel". Each one of them took on long draughts of sugar water, flew off to a nearby tree to catch their breath, and then came back to the feeder to repeat the process. This went on for several minutes before they "high-tailed it" for parts unknown. As we intimated above, we think this trio may be scouts for a larger group of hummingbirds who are enrooted to their habitats in the Southern climes. They probably are being told that Country Boys cabin still is a safe, well-stocked way station to make a stopover while they are enroute to their final destination.

Incidentally, we had occasion to call Dr. Hardy Richards later in the day about worming our puppy and after that matter was taken care of, we brought up the subject of hummingbirds migrations. He assured us that we were correct in assuming that late March and early April is the usual time for them to be coming through. He also suggested that in view of the reputation Mama and we have for coddling humming birds, we would be wise to keep a good supply of sugar and water on hand. The size of our menagerie is liable to be increasing for awhile.

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