Clear and cold. The beeps of quarry trucks mingle with the shrill calls of red-bellied woodpeckers. Two hummingbirds in a high-speed chase fly out of the woods and up over the house.
ruby-throated hummingbird
Cold and gray. A catbird crosses the yard with a fecal sac from one of its nestlings in its beak. A male ruby-throated hummingbird buzzes the boot soles on my propped-up feet.
Clear and cold. I hear a hummingbird below the porch, buzzing from one orange jewelweed goblet to the next. The sun must be up.
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.
Leaves glistening with last night’s rain. A distant raven. The puttering of a hummingbird’s small motor.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The catbird mews and warbles, a hummingbird rockets back and forth, but it’s the mosquito’s still, small voice that gets my attention.
It’s not raining. A hummingbird inspects my bergamot patch—not quite open—and dips into a soapwort bloom before zooming off.
Fire sirens wailing through the gap. A hummingbird comes to the spray from my garden hose, his gorget redder than any flower.
Overcast with a few drops of rain among the bird calls. A hummingbird hovers over a peony bud and flicks it with his tongue.
A high cloud ceiling full of holes. In the meadow, one snakeroot flower nods: hummingbird.