This lovely lady loves a pretty little bird

SHELLEY — In the middle of winter, most people aren’t thinking about hummingbirds, unless you’re Marjorie Killian, then you are always thinking about hummingbirds.

Killian’s children, grandchildren and, at 86 years old, her great-grandchildren know, if they want to make grandma happy, give her a
hummingbird trinket.

“I like hummingbirds because they’re a pretty little bird. They’re so tiny. And they’re just a beautiful little bird. I mean, if I gotta like something, why not hummingbirds?” Killian said.

The first thing greeting visitors to Killian’s house are dozens of hummingbird chimes that line the little passageway up to her front door.

Many of the chimes were once inside her living room, but when family members gifted her a large collage of family pictures for her wall, she moved them outside to free up space. However, the hummingbird chimes outside her door are only the tiniest fraction of Killian’s collection.

“Hummingbirds there, and hummingbirds there, and all across here,” Killian said as she proudly showed off her collection in her bedroom.

She said she has more than 100 hummingbird items and out of all of them, only two are alike.

“Everywhere you go, you can find something different,” Killian said. “And I got different.”

Killian started collecting hummingbird items around 40 or 50 years ago when she received her first one as a gift. But it’s not just the hummingbird chimes, shirts, plates, mugs, figurines or any of the items in her collection that she loves most, it’s the birds themselves.

Every year, Killian attends the Hummingbird Roundup at the Rudeen Ranch south of American Falls. At the roundup researchers catalog dozens of hummingbirds.

“They’ll take and weigh them to see how much they weigh. They’ll take and put a tiny little band on them,” Killian said. “They also check to see what kind of breed they are and whether they’re male or female.”

The public is invited to attend the roundup each year, and some even get that chance to hold a hummingbird. Killian said the roundup is the only time she’ll miss going to church.

However, the roundup was canceled this year because of COVID-19 so Killian wasn’t able to attend. But that didn’t stop her from seeing hummingbirds in action.

“I put the hummingbird feeder up and I get two (hummingbirds) every year,” she said.

Killian explained the best time to see hummingbirds in Shelley is in the early spring.

“They wait for the hollyhocks to start blooming. When the hollyhocks start blooming, get your bottles out because they’ll be there; you just have to hang up a feeder,” she said.

For anyone who wants to hang a hummingbird feeder, Killian gave some advice.

“You don’t have to buy the liquid. Just add four tablespoons of sugar to a cup of water. And you don’t need it to be red. They love red but you don’t need to color it, because the flowers (on the feeder) are red. You don’t need the liquid to be red,” she said.

Killian said sometimes, you miss seeing a hummingbird at your feeder, or they don’t show up. Not to worry, she has a solution for that.

“If you don’t find them there, you get on your cell phone, and you belong to Hummingbirds Anonymous and they’re always putting beautiful pictures of hummingbirds on Facebook,” she said.

Killian said she’ll keep expanding her collection growing as long as her family and friends keep giving her hummingbirds.