Hummingbirds fight each other; a towhee fights his reflection in the living room window. The sky is as blue and empty as it gets.
ruby-throated hummingbird
May 28, 2020
Misty rain. After drinking from the feeder, a hummingbird sips water from the ant guard as if to cleanse her palate.
May 19, 2020
Sunny and warm. Behind the screen of green leaves, a vulture’s lazy drift. A hummingbird collides with a carpenter bee over the yard.
May 18, 2020
A field sparrow fresh from bathing and a hummingbird fresh from fighting sit two feet apart on a walnut branch, shaking their feathers.
May 13, 2020
An earth-shaking blast from the quarry, preceded by a muffled boom as if by its own echo. I catch a glimpse of a hummingbird’s long tongue.
May 12, 2020
Through the warm sun and the cold wind, hummingbirds come and go. I squint at the trees, trying to tell if the leaves are any bigger today.
May 10, 2020
Sunny and warmer. The hummingbirds have survived yesterday’s freeze, and their tiny motors roar as they chase and do courtship displays.
May 4, 2020
The sun goes in and it’s cold. But a hummingbird still comes to the flying saucer-shaped feeder, in which rock the bodies of drowned ants.
May 2, 2020
Sunny and almost warm. A male hummingbird comes in to the feeder, after first examining the empty hook where another feeder hung last year.
May 11, 2019
Mingling with bird calls, the distant, excited cries of small children. The woods glow green. A hummingbird buzzes in to the bleeding-heart.
April 30, 2019
Gray and cool. The first hummingbird zooms past. A pileated woodpecker flies in to hammer the old butternut stump, keeping a wary eye on me.
September 17, 2016
The female hummingbird tries to get nectar out of my red iPad cover again, repeatedly probing the end of the fold, my fingers inches away.
September 6, 2016
A hummingbird lands on my red iPad cover and probes the fold with her bill at one end, then the other, while I read an article on the NSA.
September 4, 2016
The buzz of a hummingbird sizing up her reflection in a porch window. From behind the house, a Carolina wren’s incessant harangue.