And just like that, it’s autumn: clear and cool, the meadows yellow with goldenrod. A hummingbird visits the Mexican sunflower. How long till she’s off to Mexico herself?
ruby-throated hummingbird
Wednesday August 25, 2021
In the dawn light, a hummingbird double-checks that I’m not a flower, hovering over my head like a wild thought.
Thursday August 19, 2021
Breezy with sometime sunshine. A hummingbird’s buzz grows louder as she hovers in front of a window, bill to bill with an unexpected rival.
Saturday August 14, 2021
Cloudy and cool. A hummingbird buzzes in, and I wonder if she’s the same one I saw in the woods yesterday sitting on a branch, almost still.
Monday August 09, 2021
Sunny and humid. The electric whine of annual cicadas ebbs and flows. A hummingbird flies into the forest’s wall of leaves at top speed.
Friday August 06, 2021
Bright sun. A goldfinch lands on a spent bergamot head and extracts some seeds. Two hummingbirds battle over my four, scraggly beebalms.
Wednesday August 04, 2021
Cool and overcast. Goldfinches chitter over the chirr of tree crickets. For ten seconds, two hummingbirds share the bergamot.
Sunday August 01, 2021
Goldfinches like a cheering section for the sun. A hummingbird hovers 18 inches from my face, then goes around for a side view.
Friday July 30, 2021
Breezy and cool. A female hummingbird zooms back and forth between the bergamot patch and the hillside treetops already aglow in the sun.
Monday July 26, 2021
5:15. The moon through thin clouds. A whip-poor-will’s distant chant. 9:15. The sun through thin clouds. A hummingbird’s mid-air defecation.
Saturday July 17, 2021
The sun comes out and with it a hummingbird, unfazed by the presence of visitors, including a three-year-old boy gleefully destroying an old log.
Thursday July 15, 2021
Sunrise. A snort from the deer who sleeps under the crabapple tree. A hummingbird zips past the wild garlic.
Saturday July 10, 2021
A male hummingbird buzzes in to the bergamot patch, but sips nectar from the soapwort instead. The catbird improvises on a towhee’s tune.
Tuesday May 18, 2021
Even on a morning this incomparable I can be squinting at my phone and nearly miss the sun on a hummingbird’s back.