WHERE'S BOB FERGUSON WHEN WE NEED HIM (Stephen, if you get that one I'll buy you a beer) :

Farewell to Summer and Its Buzzing Creatures (DIANE ACKERMAN, September 7, 2002, NY Times)

It's 6:45 a.m. Sitting in an alcove near the back window, I watch summer packing to leave - the yard's hummingbirds busily feeding. Any day now they'll migrate to their winter homes. But at the moment, they're gobbling sugar to build the fat reserves they need for long solo flights.

I've spiked their drink, sweetened their water 3-to-1, since putting on weight is so urgent. Trees and flowers only dispense nectar in doses (to encourage pollinators to move to other blooms), but feeders provide a steady source of sweetness, and where in life can any creature find that? So I tend the feeder carefully - change the water every other day, keep ants and wasps at bay if I can.

I saw a baby hummer at the feeder for the first time this week, a late visitor I mistook for a bumblebee until I noticed the helicopter blur of its wingbeats. Here it is again. Smaller, darker and jerkier than the adults, it sips, elevates, swallows, sips six times more, then angles backward in a reverse swan dive. Yesterday morning it squawked a faint tearing-cardboard sound when a yellow jacket vexed it. One or two wasps a hummer can keep an eye on, joust with, and usually drive off. But three become gangland dangerous.

We, on the other hand, have an infestation of cluster flies. It's nowhere near so romantic. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 8, 2002 7:18 AM