Humid and cool. The ruby throat of a hummingbird shimmers in front of a hanging bandanna’s much blander red. From the other side of the house, the rising buzz of a cerulean warbler.
ruby-throated hummingbird
Raininess without much actual raining. The low motor of a hummingbird somewhere in the garden. An aborted black walnut crashes down on the back roof.
An hour past sunrise, a gnatcatcher picks off the few survivors of a tent caterpillar colony in a black cherry at the woods’ edge. A hummingbird circles my red bandanna.
A gloomy morning punctuated by brief showers. I look up at one point to spot a male hummingbird rocketing back and forth above the creek, performing for a female perched in a black elderberry bush that has just leafed out.
Cold, but no frost. A hummingbird just after sunrise buzzes up to a dame’s-rocket blossom, turns and flies off. The sun gathers strength in the treetops.
Overcast and cool. I look up from my book to see a hummingbird flying aggressively back and forth a foot away from a gnatcatcher perched in the lilac, who seems unimpressed.
Cool and clearing. Dew drips from the porch roof onto the orange jewelweed, which this morning for the first time receives no visits from a hummingbird.
Gray skies. A sheen of moisture on everything. Somewhere up in the woods, a tree lets go of a dead limb. I lock eyes with the hummingbird hovering a foot from my nose.
In the wake of a quick hummingbird with her elegant wand, a bumblebee continues to work the jewelweed, clambering up into each orange throat.
Overcast and breezy. The orange jewelweed below the porch has grown so tall, I can actually see the hummingbird visiting the topmost blossoms now—the green blur of her wings, the dew slicking her bill.
Sunrise reddens the western ridge as the flat-tire moon fades, alone in the sky. Jewelweed flowers along the stream nod and sway as the first hummingbird makes her rounds.
Neither hot nor cold under a clouded-over sky that’s faintly blue, permitting sunshine but not shadows. The hummingbird circling my hung-out red bandanna appears to have developed a taste for my salt, tapping all over with her lightning-fast tongue.
Yesterday’s red bandanna, hung out to dry in the rafters, attracts first one, then two hummingbirds. Inevitably, they fight. The winner settles on the closest tree branch.
Fog rising into blue. Everything drips. A hummingbird sits on a small branch in a small walnut tree, head swiveling all about.