THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 27, 1995 TAG: 9508250076
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 139 lines
CHARLES N. STRADLEY has a little piece of heaven on earth down by the Nottoway River where hummingbirds - dozens of them at a time - dart back and forth to and from his feeders and swarm thick as bees around the big maple tree in his front yard.
When his feeders are especially low on the sugar water that Stradley makes up daily, the birds let him know it in no uncertain terms.
``They get all up in my face,'' he said. ``They flutter all around me. I can feel a real rush of wind.''
And he can hear the hum of their rapidly beating wings and the high pitched squeak of their tiny songs as they tell Charlie Stradley what they think of his empty feeders.
``I'm in heaven when they do that,'' he declared, ``because it means they know who I am. One female will actually sit on my hand and drink from the stream as I pour it into the feeder.''
Every summer now for several years, the story's been the same. The ruby-throated hummingbirds, no bigger than 3 1/2 inches long, have been coming to his five feeders, waves upon waves of them, every day, all day long and into the evening. Their faint little whistles have become as familiar a sound in the Stradley yard as the locusts calling on a hot summer's day.
Stradley doesn't know how many birds have a taste for his sugar water, but he figures there must be at least 300 of them that come and go throughout the day. Once a friend gave Stradley a photo of the feeders, and they counted 164 birds in the one frame.
``Folks just don't believe it until they see it,'' the retired decorator said of his front-yard phenomena.
Although the birds appear to know his wife, Kathleen, and boxer dog, Joy, about as well as they know Stradley himself, they don't tolerate others quite as well. Visitors have to stand back from the feeders a little to become believers.
And there are lots of visitors who enjoy Stradley's little piece of heaven on earth these days. The Stradleys live beside the Nottoway River in Southampton County, almost at the North Carolina line. They are next door to the Dockside Restaurant, and the hummingbirds have become an added bonus of dining at the waterside eatery.
Folks headed for the restaurant must drive by the five feeders that hang from a trellis by Stradley's fence. Those who catch sight of the hummingbirds, one at every port on every feeder with others hovering behind awaiting their turn, can't help but stop.
``It started when they came to eat, and they saw the birds,'' Stradley said. ``Now they make a trip back to see the birds. We've met some of the most wonderful people because of the hummingbirds.''
Stradley chuckles over the hummers' interest in women who visit the feeders wearing flowery summertime dresses. ``The birds will inspect each flower on the dress,'' he said.
About the only time the action slows is in the middle of very hot days. Stradley says the birds are at their best early in the morning, late in the evening and oddly enough, on misty, slightly rainy days.
To keep up with the demand, Stradley must refill his feeders with sugar water four or five times daily, using about five pounds of sugar a day. People have told him his hobby is too time consuming and too expensive. But Stradley disagrees. The hummingbirds are worth every penny and every minute.
``They pay us back for every bit of it,'' he said. ``Every day, every time I walk out there, it's the same - the same enjoyment to be out there. It's a never-ending thing. I'm just as thrilled as I was when I first went out there.''
That was seven years ago when Kathleen Stradley was recovering from surgery. She would rest in a chair in the den and watch through the room's glass door some hummingbirds that visited the flowers outside.
The Stradleys decided to hang a feeder from the eaves over the door. Just three or four birds visited that summer. In September, Stradley took the feeder down and put it away for the winter. The next spring the couple noticed that hummingbirds were flying around the hook from which the feeder hung.
``I got the feeder out and soon there were so many birds, they couldn't all get to the feeder,'' Stradley recounted. ``So I got another and then another, and that's how it happened.''
The birds - shiny green males with their ruby red throats glinting in the sun, duller green females and youngsters who look like smaller females - appear to spend their time between the feeders, the big maple tree in Stradley's yard and the oak tree at the Dockside Restaurant. Some perch and preen occasionally in Stradley's anchor fencing, which forms tiny triangular portrait frames around the even tinier birds.
``These trees must be full of nests, but I've only seen one in seven years,'' Stradley said. ``I saw it attached to the side of a branch that blew out of a tree.
``It was about like a thimble, made of hair, cobwebs and lichen and minute strands of grass.''
Stradley has read up on every facet of hummingbirds, and he has learned that the little females lay three to four eggs. ``They are about the size of double-ought buckshot,'' he said.
That's smaller than a pencil eraser.
Come Sept. 15, Stradley will take his feeders down, no matter how many hummingbirds are still hanging around. He wants to make sure they don't linger in his yard when they should have started their long migration to South America for the winter.
``I hate to take them in, because I know it will be a long cold winter,'' he said. ``But I also know, God willing, I'll see them back next spring.''
Stradley sets one feeder back out when he puts up his purple martin houses on March 15. When he sees the first hummingbird, usually two to three weeks later, he puts out the rest of the feeders so the little birds can quickly regain their strength from the grueling migration home.
``In the spring of the year when they get here, they look like their feathers have been used as bottle washers,'' he said. ``Their feathers are all in disarray.''
Stradley makes his sugar water with one part sugar to three parts water. Though it's a problem he doesn't have except in the beginning of the years, he said, the water should be changed every two days so it doesn't ferment. He also cleans each feeder in plain hot water every two days.
Because he's retired, Stradley has the time to make up the sugar water, fill the feeders, wash them and do the job right. But If you don't have time, don't do it, he said, because the birds begin to rely on the presence of food.
Stradley feels so strongly about feeding the birds the correct way that he said to put his number in the paper. It's (804) 562-2589.
``If I can get a person to feed 'em and do it right, it's worth it,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: MARK MITCHELL/Staff color photos
Charles Stradley estimates at least 300 hummingbirds daily visit the
five feeders at his home on the Nottoway River near Franklin.
Stradley hung his first hummingbird feeder seven years ago when his
wife, Kathleen, started watching the little birds visit the flowers
while she recovered from surgery.
Graphic
HOW TO HEAR ONE
GETTING THERE
HOURS
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB