The 99%'s Favorite Drinking Spot in Carlsbad

So last December, Dr Desert Flower and I moved from our home in Carlsbad that had no view, no breeze, and was on a fairly busy street, with a 2 car garage, to another home in Carlsbad that had a canyon and ocean sunset view, a consistent breeze nearly every morning and evening, a pool, a wine cellar, and a 3 car garage - instead of a Tetris Packed 2 car - and was on a cut de sac with very little traffic each day.  At the previous home, from June 2015-Dec 2018, we had a fair number of hummingbirds visit our yard, possess our feeders, and provide visual amusement to both the humans and our feline familiar who'd look longingly out the window at the hummingbirds, and salivate.  We were not sure if the hummingbirds would warm up to our new location, exposed on a canyon rim with a 200 foot drop into the valley below, without the lush vegetation in which they previous hid at the first Carlsbad house.  We set out the feeders, and waited.

No need to "share a straw" when you bring your own

It didn't take long.  We soon had dozens of hummingbirds vying for positions, perches, a place at the free-drink happy hour bar.  The feeders along the western fence at the canyon's edge were THE MOST popular.  10 holed nectar feeders that consistently draw 10, 11, or 12 birds (where they share the same hole with the beaks side-by-side), began to be drained at the rate of 1 quart each day, or 1000 mls per day.  At a 4:1 water to sugar ratio, that meant that I was going through a 4 pound bag of sugar every 4 or 5 days, washing mold and fungus from the feeders every 2 or 3 days (using warm water and a tiny bit of Dawn dishwashing liquid), and never getting tired of seeing the swarms of birds enjoying the free nectar.


At the old house, a single mature dominant male would try and "own" a specific feeder, and chase off all other birds in a futile attempt to hoard the whole pint or whole quart of nectar to himself.  Sometimes a mature male would let a female of the same species drink at "his feeder" but that was really only during mating season (in the late Winter and early Spring), and rarely ever in mid-day when sunlight was plentiful and visual acuity (to see if the birds were male, female, adolescent [not yet plumage differentiated] and which species was visiting) was much clearer.  At "humming bird happy hour", AKA an hour before sunset as the shadows grow longer and ambient light substantially decreases, "tolerance" of other birds at a feeder increased and one might see 1/2 a dozen birds drinking at the same time from the same feeder.  It was mostly 1 dominant mature male, several females, and a handful of adolescents who were trying to appear as if they might be females of mating age... but it was often more than just one hummingbird at a specific feeder at happy hour.


In the new canyon rim home, the fence adjacent feeders are now remarkably successful beyond our wildest dreams.  There are often 10 birds perched, drinking from 10 holes, as 2 to 4 more birds hover nearby, waiting their turn.  Sometimes there at 11 or 12 birds drinking from 10 holes.  Occasionally there's a feisty Rufous or Anna's mature male who tries to drive off other birds, but the mature females Generally Ignore such trouble makers.  "We have nests to feed!" "Can't a lady get a drink?" and "No thanks, I already mated" are chirped phrases I imagine (project) are stated at every happy hour where the majority of the hummingbirds are mature females and adolescents, with just one or two males trying to get a drink alongside as well.

Um, I think I left my ID back at the nest... (12 birds on a 10 holed feeder, some of them undoubtedly nest mates)

We have at least 5 species of hummingbirds who visit our feeders.   I will state them here by rank of "most plentiful" to "least plentiful, more rare" as seen in our backyard.  Thanks to Cornel's All About Birds site, (and Audobon's site... since Cornel's is not loading in many instances today) you can learn more about them as well, if you follow the links:
Anna's:  https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Annas_Hummingbird/id  The NBA players of the hummingbird world; 20% bigger than everyone else.
Costa's; https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/costas-hummingbird
Rufous; https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/rufous-hummingbird ; small but pugnacious
Allen's; https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Allens_Hummingbird/overview
Blackchinned;  https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-chinned_Hummingbird/id



When I inquired to Cornel as to how much nectar a single hummingbird (using an Anna's as an example) consumes in a day, I was given the following answer:
Anna's Hummingbirds weigh on average about 1.95 grams.
Hummingbirds consume 1/2 their body weight each day on nectar, gnats, spiders, and small insects.  The nectar provides carbs while the insects provide protein.

...so if I am making At Least one quart a day (or 1000 milliliters) of nectar for the feeders along the fence, and each bird drinks a maximum of 1 ml each day (as 1 ml of water - 1 gram... the beauty of metric measure), then I am feeding 1000 birds every single day in my backyard.  Some hotter days, when we have Santa Anna winds, the birds are consuming 2 quarts per day.


Dr Desert Flower and I know this has led to a significant increase in the local hummingbird population, as well as helping to sustain mutations and variations that otherwise would probably rapidly perish "in the wild" without a government run, free nectar for the 99% program, such as we are providing.  We've seen beak mutations (bumped beaks, split beaks, frayed ends of beaks, broken beaks) at both the previous home's backyard and our current canyon rim home.  We've watched a severely bumped beak "male" try and take over a backyard feeder and dominate it, only to molt the next year (with the same bumped beak) into a female with muted plumage - perhaps a hermaphroditic XXY or androgen desensitivity mutation?  It's no longer "survival of the fittest" in our backyard, but the prospering of the most social, least combative.  And all it costs me is 4 pounds of sugar every 4 or 5 days.  A social safety net well-worth sustaining.

Correcting Degenerative Spondylosis

When I was unexpectedly let got my my employer of nearly 20 years back in 2017, I threw myself into a physical fitness regimen to occupy my time and work on chronic health issues that had been bugging me for several decades.  I was determined to lower my A1C, try and get ab definition, improve my aerobic capacity, and increase my yoga practice from 2 or 3 times a week to 5 or 6.  For about 9 months of 2017, I was successful in working towards my goals and making significant progress.  A1C lowered by a whole digit.  First time in 1/2 a century I went from Michelin Man torso to almost a semblance of abs and ribs and lats definition.  Practiced yoga so much that I began to name the pelicans who soared over the South Ponto cliffs where I practiced each day.  After 60 to 90 minutes of yoga and crunches and extended plank poses, I ran the 93 stairs from parking lot to top of cliffs, 10 or 12 or 15 times in a row, pushing myself to go as fast as possible, taking 2 to 3 stairs at a time, going both up and down.

This ledge no longer exists, since a fancy coastal hotel has destroyed the bluff over-look which is now apparently private property.

This is where I made a BIG mistake.

An aging guy in his 50s shouldn't be trying to do Parkour (as I had previously in Orange County at the beach on the massive rocks there), or extreme stair running.  All of that IMPACT did not do my hips, knees, or spine any favors, as I thudded down the stairs and sprinted up them at a running pace.  The whole time I was driving down my A1C and helping my muscle groups to develop, I was causing high cycle fatigue to damage my hip joints and spine (L4-l5-S1) with all the cumulative impacts.  In 2018, I found a new job here locally in Carlsbad, and cut my yoga back to twice a week, along with stair running just twice a week.  In 2019 some developers destroyed the South Ponto Beach cliffs with a high end boutique hotel construction project that blocked the top of the stairs and eliminated the pretty spot in all of Carlsbad where anyone could practice yoga, a hundred feet above the ocean with an on-shore breeze.

Also in 2019, I began to limp as my right hip started to show significant signs of wear.  My lower spine felt akin to "a stack of tea cups and saucers" that were ready to tip over and crash, if I did something as "extreme" as reaching 2 or 3 feet diagonally in front of me, my back popped, felt like it was going to collapse, and drove significant chronic sciatica on my right side all the way down my right leg.  In the 2nd 1/2 of 2019, I had a series of X-rays and MRIs that revealed Spondylosis, disc generation, leg nerve impingement, and 4 mm of misalignment on L4-L5-S1.  My orthopedist explained that the minor misalignment was not a huge issue, but the nerve impingement would only continue to get worse.  My right leg would sometimes "go out" for a step or two, as if it was no longer attached.  Then it would come back.  The ortho explained that the frequency and duration of the absentee-right leg would increase over time, as the nerve got further crushed.
The recommended solution, as to do an ALIF, Anterior Lumbar Inter-fusion, where they cut you from belly button down the middle, open up your abs, move over all your sacked intestines in-tact to the right side, scoot over your aorta and vena cava, and access the front of your spine to excavate (medical dremel tool) the front of your disks & vertebrae,  inserting titanium cages that have allograft adult stem cells inside of them to encourage your spine to accept them.  Then they turn you over on a sandwich bed in which you, the patient, are the meat of the sandwich.  Once on your stomach, two Large slits are cut on your left and right lumbar muscles along the muscle fibers, and screws and tie rods are installed on the back side to stabilize all the cage and allograft work that was just done on the front side.  After a 6 to 8 hour surgery, you stay in the hospital 3 to 5 days, and you DON'T BLT (Bend, Lift, Twist) for the next 3 months, minimum, wearing a little back brace that covers the 3 incisions, but which does not Prevent you from Bending, Lifting, or Twisting.  "How will I know if I've gone too far?" I asked the Doctor and his RN.  "The pain will tell you".   This freaked me out before surgery, as I tried on the back brace a week before the operation, having wrongly assumed it would be a confining corset that would not let me move.  I can move a great deal in the back brace. My body screams at me when I've moved too far.

So 16 days ago, on Monday morning at 530am, I had my ALIF surgery with the posterior back hardware reinforcements completed.  At the 6 hour mark (of the 8 hour estimate) the orthopedic surgeon came out to talk to Dr Desert Flower to tell her I was fine and everything went well, while his PA apparently closed up my sutures. An hour later in recovery, I kept complaining that "a giant is kneeling on my back's left side!" (the side that previously had not hurt at all).  The pain meds flowed freely Monday and early Tuesday, and I complained very little. On Wednesday I was weening myself off the pain meds, and feeling good enough to come home.  Thursday DDF brought me home, and I've been rather sedentary since October 25th, as my spine slowly builds bone around the titanium hardware and the 3 separate spinal bones become one longer, strong bone fused together.

I had sought out a 2nd opinion, which took 2 weeks before planning the surgery, since DDF's employer based health insurance has a 2nd opinion consulting service where they get experts from Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic to review the case.  The 2nd opinion concurred with he ALIF.  The 2nd opinion also concurred that fixing the spine has to happen before repairing the damaged right hip joint, or a substantially increased risk of hip joint dislocation could happen if the spinal fusion was attempted after a hip replacement.  I spoke to the VP of Business Development at OrthoFix about the Phoenix NXG system that was going to be installed into my body.  He was a very helpful person who spoke confidently and intelligently about OrthoFix's products, regulatory body approvals, Quality System, FDA approvals and recalls, and fielded hardware installations that number in the 10s of thousands when Gen 2 and Gen 3 (current) are considered together, since Gen 3 is not much different that Gen 2.  As a life long engineer interested in quality aspects of premium products, this comforted me somewhat, and I thanked the VP for his openness and time.

The merciful NSAIDs I'd been taking for my hip were discontinued October 14th, a week before spine surgery, since NSAIDs inhibit new bone growth.  Now I'm just on the Tylenol, but sometimes the Tylenol has hydrocodone or Oxycodone in it, when the pain gets above a 5 on the 1-10 pain scale.  I'm actively trying to not become dependent on the narcotics, so I endure a 1-3 or 1-4 level until I feel it crescendoing towards a 5 or 7 or 8.   The first week at home was relatively pain free, with barely 1 out of a possible 8 pain killers being taken each day.  Then, on Saturday November 2nd, we had friends over, and I over-did it with activity, grilling, refilling hummingbird feeders, going in and out of the house, and Saturday night my left leg - the one that has a good hip and never hurt me previously - was in tremendous pain all night, resistive to any narcotics, and preventing sleeping more than 20 minutes at a time.  Sunday I rested, sedentary, but Sunday night was no better.  Monday I rested again, and finished a good book on the Tulsa 1921 Memorial Day massacre where state sanctioned mob violence destroyed the African American section of Tulsa burning down 1100 buildings and leaving 5000 people homeless (there will be a blog posting on this later, here).  My doctor's office has advised that I Carefully and Cautiously stretch while laying on my back, to bring my knees to my chest and straighten my legs without bending my spine.  I hope it works tonight... zobaczymy.
My cousin and one of my co-workers had this same spinal surgery on their necks, where the wind pipe and throat are moved over and hardware installed on the cervical vertebrae.  Both my cousin and my co-worker told me the importance of stretching after surgery, with reasonable limits... and once all the bones are fully fused in 9 to 12 months, that I'll need to stretch every day to avoid stiffening up and getting sore again.   So I have that to look forward to as well.

Next October (2020) I get to have my right hip joint replaced, since the protective cartilage is completely gone and I'm bone-spur-to-bone-spur grinding whenever I walk and load the right hip.  Getting old is So Much Fun!