I consider a wild bird a pet when that bird takes notice of me and makes a special effort to hover in front of me and look me square in the eye, on repeated occasions. And since I also feed the birds and they comes to my feeders every year.
This bird is a hummingbird, a bird that Ornithologists tell us, wings beat 75 times a second, wings that are narrow and have no joints, and can spin almost like rotary propellers and can move in any direction in a microsecond. Any wonder that these birds fascinate us.
These birds in my area are the "ruby-throat," hummingbirds. They are small and very delicate, about 4 inches long and weigh about as much as a penny. Yet this tiny bird makes a non-stop 500 mileflight across the Gulf of Mexico, every spring and in early autumn.
The hummingbirds have no need to reduce speed as it approaches my feeders, as it can be at full velocity and yet stop abruptly. And although, we might not see them perching much they do perch as much as other birds do. However, their feet are small and weak so they do not hop or walk about the yard.
Hummingbird nests are the size of a walnut. They use plant-down and lichen to build their nests and spider silk to make it strong and anchor it to trees. They lay two pure white pea-sized eggs in the nest. After about three weeks the eggs hatch. The babies are very tiny. The young are fed by regurgitation, where the mother jabs her long bill down the baby's throat and pushes food into their stomach.
As the baby's grow they are seen sitting on the edge of the nest stretching their wings and combing out tail feathers. They try to use their wings, over and over, until one day when they spring from the nest and fly.
I feed my hummingbirds sugar water, one part sugar to four parts water. It is easy to bring the water to a boil and then add the sugar. Each time before refilling my feeders, I wash the feeders with hot soapy water and a bottle brush. This keeps fungus or mold, from growing in the feeders.
When these fearless little fliers come to look me in the eye and the iridscent feathers glisten in the sunlight, I marval at the beauty of this little bird, as it hovers before me, then quickly vanishes leaving as quickly as it came.
I provide natural food for these birds as well by planting gladiolus and petunias, nasturtiums and begonias and hibiscus flowers.
My kids have a few wild birds that will eat out of there hands. They love to challenge of seeing how many they can get to eat from their hands and it is fascinating to watch them so close up.
I often wonder if this is safe but being boys they kind of look at me like I am crazy!
It is really amazing to see this in person. Some people just naturally have the talent of holding up a few seeds and birds will just fly up and sit on their hands. It is as if the bird feels that the person has no fear and so forth. I wish I could do this but as much as I love and adore birds,, its hard for me to do this because I am naturally a very paranoid person. I usually get scared that they would bite me or something worse (haha).
One thing I forgot to mention was never use honey and never use artificial sweeteners, and never hang the hummingbird feeders in direct sunlight.
If you feed wildbirds here is a easy recipe to make your own suet bars.
First grind the suet and then melt it in a fry pan or broiler. Have enough chunk suet to fill two cups. Slowly melt then add two cups of peanut butter and a dozen cups of cornmeal while the concoction is still hot. Stir well until blended and spoon mixture into empty tuna cans or cupcake forms.
You can also limit the amount of corn meal and add raisins and crushed dry dog food and dried insects, cracked corn and seeds, or cracked nuts to the mixture. Tack the cans to a tree or put suet cakes in disgarded net onion bags.
I'm glad you clarified that you meant wild birds as pets as they 'stay' wild. As a wildlife rehaber, and I have seen way too many people actually make wild birds as pets from being found as a baby, injured etc. We need more people to leave the wild in the wild and utilize wildlife as our 'free born' pets to come and go as they please in their natural environments in the city or country. By providing good quality feed and shelters, wild animals can make very good 'pet's so to say and we all can learn a great deal from them all!
We live in the country, in an old trailer house, and often have the doors and windows open to let the fresh air come through the house. There are a lot of Carolina Wrens and Cardinals that live in the trees around the house, so we always have the bird feeders out for them to come and eat, and we especially enjoy listening to the wrens with their "cheater, cheater, cheater" call that they repeat over and over, and then they will say another word over and over.
Sometimes, when we have the windows and doors are open, they will just take a shortcut right through the house, often flying in through the bathroom window, and then out the back door.
Occasionally, they fly right into the living room, and will land on the curtains and watch us for a while, chirping , and then fly back outside. They do not seem panicked when they do this, like they were lost, they really seem to be just paying us a visit.
Probably, they are there to tell me that the bird feeder needs refilled....
