The smallest jerks of the animal kingdom

Hello Everyone,

Bird watching is in the news, and at the risk of being a true hipster who was into it before it was cool, I'll just say that living at the cottage has made me want to take it up for some time now. You're outside, there's a certain physicality to it, and there's tech you can spend way too much money on. I love it.

We recently set up the hummingbird feeder at the front of the house, and it's been a big hit. We see the birds there a lot, and it's got me thinking about what life must be like from their perspective.

Imagine being one of the smallest creatures in the animal kingdom. A precarious existence. You need enormous amounts of food, relative to your size, just to keep body and soul together. Every morning, you wake up on the brink of starvation (can relate), and your food source is flowers, where you get a sip of nectar here and a sip there. You have to work so hard just to keep going. Also, every other bird is bigger than you and dangerous to you.

Then one day, you discover a giant tube of food that magically gets refilled before it ever even gets close to empty.

It would be like heaven, the end of all your worries. You could chill all day in a tree nearby, then zoom down whenever you had the slightest pang of hunger. You could explore the area as much as you wanted without ever having to worry about resources. You could build a nest and watch your babies grow fat and healthy.

You'd think they wouldn't be such dicks about it.

But they 100% are. There are four holes and perches on the feeder and the food supply never runs out. But you only ever see two at a time, max, and even then one usually tries to dive bomb the other to drive it away. They chirp at each other something fierce, and almost never sit quietly and eat in peace. Birds are beautiful assholes.

Wes

Photos

The first is of said jerk.

The second is of trillium from a recent hike.

The third is of a pie I baked recently. It was delicious.

Last is of the old canoe that dad fixed up. Lookin' good now.