The hummingbirds dash around my back yard, as hard to track as a feathered 3-card monte game; are there 2 or 3 or 4 hummers?
Any hummer that sits in our Bartlett pear tree is automatically named Bart. It fights any other hummer using any one of five feeders below in corners of our yard. Bart also has high ground in a maple.
The other hummers seem to get along, if not for Bart. They skulk around in the apple tree and the neighbor’s maple, waiting for Bart to get distracted, so they can dash to a feeder.
I put out a new feeder, just for the drama. The hummers took turns following me around. I held it at arm’s length, hoping for some cute perching, but no. Bart did jump on it a few seconds after I placed it in the Rhodys. I was worried they couldn’t find it. Ha.
They let me get close in a few times and take pictures, in return.
They prove impossible to ID. They turn their heads like quick change artists and switch colors, then disappear, to reappear in a distant tree without being anywhere in between, a feathered quantum physics equation.
Another hummer--maybe-- lurks in the dwarf apple beneath the lone feeder, waiting for Bart to look away.
My smooth talking did not impress this hummer, though.
I was upset the hummers were playing tricks on me, so I turned to the heron feeders, erm, I meant the goldfish ponds, for more colors.
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