Paul Miller
by Paul Miller
(Vancouver, Washington, USA)
Backyard Anna's
This is the first full year we have put out hummingbird feeders in our Vancouver, Washington home and have named a few distinctively marked regulars in the mix of hummers we get year-round here!
To help our new backyard hummingbird decor theme, we've collected some hummingbird sun glass, wind ornaments, windchimes and a decoration bird being a huge crow-sized hummingbird which I painted in the native Anna's hummingbird pattern, and a colorful garden flag with what is supposed to be a Ruby Throated hummingbird sipping from a bunch of bright red flowers.
Our backyard hummers entertain us by sometimes batting the ornaments around with their beaks and then watching them move.
One bird even attacked the wind chimes "bird", repeatedly jamming its beak into the much bigger inanimate bird's neck.
This particular bird is my favorite, a curious young Anna's male called "hummy."
Hummy noticed my garden flag almost as soon as I put it out.
He flew over to it and hovered in front about a foot in front of the flower-hummingbird illustration, eyeing, in turn, the "hummer" and then the flowers.
Hummy moved laterally from one side of the flag to the other, left to right, as if he were near-sighted and reading the newspaper.
I was in stitches suppressing laughter that would have scared the little bird away.
After about twenty seconds of side to side hovering, Hummy satisfied himself that the flag wasn't a meal or the bird on it a threat and zipped on to more real flowers.
