Clear and cold. I hear a hummingbird below the porch, buzzing from one orange jewelweed goblet to the next. The sun must be up.
ruby-throated hummingbird
8/16/2023
A mosquito rests on the arm of my Adirondack chair, watching the sunrise. A hummingbird surprised by a sudden movement buzzes toward me rather than away.
8/15/2023
Leaves glistening with last night’s rain. A distant raven. The puttering of a hummingbird’s small motor.
8/14/2023
At ten minutes till sunrise, the first hummingbird buzzes in to the orange touch-me-nots. A wood thrush calls from the woods’ edge, but doesn’t sing.
8/4/2023
Cool, humid and overcast. A pair of hummingbirds sit side by side on a bare twig, the male rising and hovering behind the female every few seconds to copulate with a decorousness one might not have expected from such fierce birds.
7/22/2023
Cool and clear. A female hummingbird keeps hovering in front of my face and chirping, intermittently joined by two others. I am not wearing any bright colors. I’m left wondering what message I’ve failed to understand.
7/17/2023
The best way to summon a hummingbird, it seems, is with another hummingbird: as soon as one appears, there’s another to fight with it. A deer sneezes behind the springhouse.
7/14/2023
The catbird mews and warbles, a hummingbird rockets back and forth, but it’s the mosquito’s still, small voice that gets my attention.
7/8/2023
It’s not raining. A hummingbird inspects my bergamot patch—not quite open—and dips into a soapwort bloom before zooming off.
6/2/2023
Fire sirens wailing through the gap. A hummingbird comes to the spray from my garden hose, his gorget redder than any flower.
5/13/2023
Overcast with a few drops of rain among the bird calls. A hummingbird hovers over a peony bud and flicks it with his tongue.
9/15/2022
A high cloud ceiling full of holes. In the meadow, one snakeroot flower nods: hummingbird.
9/3/2022
As above, so below: white sky, white snakeroot. A hummingbird buzzes in to bother the jewelweed below the porch.
9/1/2022
Sunny and cool. A hummingbird moves slowly along a porch rafter flicking the fast whip of her tongue, testing, tasting.