Soft sunlight and the scent of autumn leaf-mould. Two female hummingbirds visit the jewelweed together and leave together, but seem quite competitive around the flowers: a mother trying to distance herself from a fledged offspring, I suppose.
ruby-throated hummingbird
Again I am the object of a hummingbird’s intense study from three feet away, this time for nearly a minute. Then she’s off to the back of the house and the banks of orange jewelweed there.
Long-sleeve weather at sunrise. A female hummingbird hovers in front of me, then on either side, as if trying to recall where she knows me from.
Cool and breezy, with everything damp from another rainy night. An indigo bunting sings a few bars and falls silent. An jewelweed stalk still sways from a hummingbird’s visit.
Dawn thunderstorm moving off by sunrise, which a single crow heralds from the dead top of a locust. The first hummingbird arrives at the jewelweed before the rain has quite stopped. Another storm rumbles in the west.
Cool and still, with a white sky and feeble sun. The jewelweed in the dripline of the porch has grown tall enough that I can see as well as hear the occasional hummingbird visitor, sipping nectar from bright orange goblets. At the other end of the yard, all the lilac leaves are turning brown.
Sunny and cool. I happen to spot a moment of tenderness between hummingbirds: he buzzing back and forth a few inches from her perch in the eastern red cedar, she tilting her head back for a lightning-fast meeting of tongues.
Clear and cool—the first morning of a dry high. A hummingbird visits the orange jewelweed below the porch. A pungent, camphor-like odor makes me think of blossoming yarrow, but I finally decide instead it’s coming from the black locust limbs smashed down in a storm more than a week ago.
A sun shower an hour after sunrise. Hummingbirds battle over the mop-headed bergamot. I scuttle back indoors to get things done before a scheduled power outage.
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.
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.