Green blur: a hummingbird. Two or three pileated woodpeckers cackle back and forth. The meter reader’s truck, its flashing yellow light.
ruby-throated hummingbird
July 28, 2012
Sitting outside with my laptop, blind to the world. A phoebe flies past two feet from my nose, followed a minute later by a hummingbird.
July 19, 2012
The sound of a hummingbird at full throttle: a male rocketing back and forth in front of the cedar tree for a hidden female audience of one.
July 7, 2012
A fawn among the wild garlic: the white tops continue in the spots of its coat. Later, a hummingbird at the beebalm: matching red throats.
May 30, 2012
Cool and clear; mist rising off the trees. From around the corner of the house, the zoom and chatter of a hummingbird’s courtship flight.
May 15, 2012
Chipmunks chase in the driveway. A hummingbird hovers beside the porch, sipping rainwater from a spiderweb in the tall weeds.
September 7, 2011
A hummingbird hovers over the red porch floor made glossy by wind-blown rain. A catbird on a dead limb tilts its head to eye the clouds.
September 3, 2011
A hummingbird buzzes into the garden, and I follow her bill to the last bergamot flower’s four thin flagons. A truck clatters past.
August 19, 2011
A buck in velvet, his coat already turning gray, startles up out of the grass. A hungry hummingbird presses her bill to the metal flamingo.
July 9, 2011
Wood thrush and cardinal song. A male hummingbird chases a silver-spotted skipper off the beebalm, then retreats to a dead branch to preen.
June 23, 2011
A ten-minute downpour. In its aftermath, the ruby-throated hummingbird’s eponymous throat patch rising like a small sun from the weeds.
June 14, 2011
I hear something chewing in the tall weeds. Behind the lilac, a hummingbird bent on courtship opens the throttle on its small engine.
May 18, 2011
A light drizzle. The one green leaf at the end of a branch on the otherwise dead cherry shakes itself dry and turns back into a hummingbird.
April 28, 2011
Up in the field, a turkey erects his traveling theater and poses for an audience of two. The first hummingbird hovers in front of my face.