What’s happened to San Jose hummingbirds?

Birds came to a longtime feeder despite the presence of other birds, but now they're nowhere to be seen.

DEAR JOAN: We have fed and enjoyed hummingbirds in our backyard for years. We have a feeder hanging from the center of our gazebo, where it is protected and so are they.

This year, finches built a nest in the corner of the gazebo before we realized they were there. They were flying around the feeder and even perching on it. The hummers still came to feed until the babies fledged.

The finches are gone and the nest is down, but no hummers. What can we do to get them back?

Debby, San Jose

DEAR DEBBY: It is difficult to know why hummers choose to mob some feeders and ignore others, or why once popular feeders suddenly become abandoned.

As the hummers weren’t bothered by the flitting finches, it’s doubtful that they were scared away by other birds. Still, take a look around your yard to see if something has changed that might be throwing them off.

Is the feeder you’re using still in good shape, or have the colors faded? Did you or your neighbors go a little heavy handed with pesticides, depleting a necessary food source for the birds?

Hummingbirds can be a bit unpredictable — to humans, anyway — and they might have found another source of food.

Take your feeder down for a few days, clean it well, brighten up any fading colors or get a new feeder. You also can attract hummingbirds to your yard by having the color red prominently featured, either in flowers or in garden décor. One reader hung a Canadian flag in her yard, which the hummers found very appealing.

DEAR JOAN: There is a pair of very large, very scary black beelike insects in our yard. They appear to be mating, are buzzing loudly and seem to be headed behind the same decorative redwood shutters that produced a large pile of sawdust last year.

What have we got here? Are they as dangerous as they appear, like wasps? What are they doing to our house, and how should I deal with it?

Vic Ryerson, Orinda

DEAR VIC: You have carpenter bees, and they are drilling holes in your decorative shutters — or the wood behind them — and laying eggs. They rarely do serious damage, but if you have concerns, take down the shutters and see what’s going on back there.

Carpenter bees usually focus on decaying wood, so you might need to replace the shutters or paint them.

All bees are beneficial, but carpenter and native bees are the most helpful in pollination. Carpenter bees also are among the most mellow of bees. Honeybees can be aggressive in protecting their hives, but carpenter bees have no hive to worry about. The males don’t have stingers and the females rarely use theirs. If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.

Keeping cats away

I had several readers suggest ways for keeping a wandering cat out of your yard. They included lying in wait and spraying the cat with a hose, installing motion-activated sprinklers, using an air horn whenever you see the cat, planting a pot of catnip as a distraction, live trapping and taking it to the animal shelter — and one that suggested violence, which I do not condone.

Have a question for Joan?

Use this form to submit questions. Photos should be mailed separately to jmorris@bayareanewsgroup.com.