The Hummers Are Back!

This year is the first spring we’ve had since the renovation to do normal outdoor household things. As most of you know, just the general stuff requires an investment of time and sweat. Doing some research on what kind of grass to plant after having part of the yard dug up led me to an article on hummingbirds. Its timeline showed that hummingbirds in this area usually return around the end of April. And no, I have no idea how the heck I got from grass seed to hummingbirds. Maybe grass seed didn’t seem all that interesting.

After waxing nostalgic for a bit over how I used to love having all the bird stuff when the kidlet was small, I thought, why not? Watching birds was something we’d enjoyed together. But I wondered, just because he’s grown now, why I felt I had to deny myself the simple pleasure I’d once had. On my next trip to the home improvement store I picked up a hummingbird feeder.

Mixed up a batch of food yesterday and hung it near a shiny new pot of petunias. And pronto! At dusk we sat out on the deck and watched the show. It’s amazing to me how the little things search out food so fast. I think we may have a pair of them.

As I was watering the newly planted grass seed this morning, one actually flew into the spray and held its mouth open for a drink. It shivered as it landed on the straw, groomed itself, showered and flew away. The whole experience probably didn’t take more than a minute, but I just stood there. Mesmerized. I’ve never seen a hummingbird land on the ground before. It was just luck that I happened to be looking in that direction.

I’m going to try to set up my camera over the next couple days so I can share some pics with you.