For a bird lover like Lorraine Kossler, seeing a hummingbird flutter 12 inches from her face was thrilling.
“When you hear the sound at first, it’s kind of like, shocking,” Kossler, who is from Florida, said. “But then as he comes closer, you want him to really stay close.”
Lake Hope State Park, located in McArthur, which is about a 30 minute drive from Athens, has been holding its free, Hand-Feeding Hummingbirds weekly program Thursday through Sunday since July 1 at the park’s nature center. Next week, though, will be the last opportunity to get up close and personal with the ruby-throated hummingbirds, as the free program ends for the season on Sept. 5.
Participants of the program receive a short tube of sugar water with a red pipe cleaner tied around the top and are instructed to sit outside, randomly scattered away from one another. The red pipe cleaner is meant to mimic a flower, and the sugar water, comprised of four-parts water to one-part sugar, resembles the nectar that hummingbirds find in the wild.
The Hand-Feeding Hummingbirds program is held annually and has remained an experience that people will travel a considerable distance to partake in, with many gatherings even seeing up to 150 participants, according to park officials.
“People (have) come from way out of state. … I know people come a long ways just to feed the hummingbirds,” Lori Grupenhof, the assistant manager of Lake Hope State Park, said.
Jill and Dave Kvalheim of Westerville, who met each other in a metro park, try to seek out outdoor experiences and keep close to nature through events such as the hand-feeding.
“There’s nothing unique about this place that causes the hummingbirds to be here — it’s just providing a habitat for them. … They learn that there’s food here for them … It’s the (human) effort to bring them here. So I thought that was neat,” Dave Kvalheim said.
The most important part is to sit as still and as quietly as possibly, park officials told participants.
That strategy worked well for Jill Kvalheim — she had multiple hummingbirds drink from the tube, which she held close to her face.
“It was like a little, personal air conditioning unit,” she said.
Although skittish and easily scared, the birds become used to people over time, and hand-feeding is easier than many people may think, Grupenhof said.
Male hummingbirds are especially eager to approach humans to feed, Grupenhof said. She often encounters red-chested male hummingbirds hovering right over her head as she refills the nature center’s feeders, she said.
“He would come back and hover like, ‘Hey! It’s time to feed me.’ So they get accustomed to people,” Grupenhof said.
Hummingbirds seemed to have become more acquainted with participants such as Jeff Amrine of Lewis Center. Sunday alone, he said he had at least 10 approach him.
“Two years ago when I came with a group, I was the only person that got a hummingbird to stop. They must like me. I don’t know if they like my odor … I was going to wear red today in case, but I thought ‘Well, I didn’t want them pecking on me,’ ” Amrine said.
Heiki Perko, a Lake Hope State Park naturalist, said a sign of the hummingbirds’ intelligence is that they teach their offspring where to find food, and also that they will become more comfortable around humans while still being cautious.
“I know birds are smart. Period,” Perko said. “I don’t know where the whole ‘bird brain’ thing came from because they’re really smart.”
