TAMMS COUPLE ENJOY VISITS BY HUMMINGBIRDS

TAMMS, Ill. -- Sitting quietly in the screened porch of their Tamms home, Jim and Lula Pickett offer quite a contrast to the frenetic activity taking place just inches outside the screen.

Zooming, twisting, humming, buzzing and chirping, as many as 75 hummingbirds visit the Pickett's country home on a given summer night.

"It's almost impossible to count them," Jim Pickett said. "But there are four feeders and six holes on each feeder, and I've seen eight or 10 hummingbirds flying around each feeder waiting its turn."

The Picketts bought their first hummingbird feeder eight years ago and since then have added three more. Jim Pickett said he can go through two gallons of sugar water every day filling and refilling the feeders.

"I tried commercial feed but they didn't like it nearly as much as they do the sugar water," he said.

The hummingbirds appear skittish, or it just might be the ordinary quickness of their movements, around people. A photographer trying to get a picture of the 2-inch-long birds had to move slowly to aim his camera. He had to sit in one spot unmoving before the birds would descend from the tree tops around the Picketts' property to the feeders. Even then the birds kept a watchful eye on the stranger: They hovered a foot or two away and studied him before shooting off to feed.

Once everyone was inside the porch, and essentially out of sight, the air filled with the drone of the hummingbirds' tiny wings, sounding much like a swarm of bees.

Lula Pickett keeps a diary of the hummingbirds' visits, noting the first day of their arrival and the day of their departure for the south. This year the first bird arrived on April 16, and already many have begun the long trip to their winter nesting sites in Central and South America.

"I can't believe these birds fly all the way over the Gulf of Mexico," Jim Pickett said. "That's a 200-mile flight. I can't believe their little old bodies could make it."

Many of the birds make the Picketts' home an annual stop, leading the Picketts to name a few of them that have outstanding markings. They can tell which are the males because their throats and chest are bright red. And while the hummingbirds' food consists of nectar and sugar water, they aren't always sweet to each other.

"They will fight," Jim Pickett said. "We had one male that had staked out a feeder and he wouldn't let any other bird even near it. So after awhile I moved that one out to his own feeding area."

Pickett said the birds don't trouble people. His grandchildren and great-granddaughter like to sit out on the porch and watch the birds as well. He does have to keep the feeders clean because a fungus that is prone to growing in the sugary water will kill the hummingbirds.

The Picketts have more than just the frenzied activity of their hummingbirds for entertainment at this time of year. Deer have started to drift out of the woods and gold finch, orioles, starlings and bluebirds are all finding their way to the Picketts' back yard.

"With the deer and the hummingbirds we spend a lot of time out here," Jim Pickett said. "We've grown kind of attached to them."