Adventures of a Hummingbird.

One of the first things I noticed when I looked outside this morning was that the hummingbird feeders were frozen solid. The temperatures were down in the 20's last night, so cold and dry there wasn't even frost on the plants. I felt very guilty when I noticed a little hummingbird sitting in the branches of the apple tree trying to warm up in the sun. Feeling bad for this one and the others that have been visiting and also seeing that the Fuchsia flowers had been killed by the cold I brought the feeder inside to "thaw". After about a half an hour it was out hanging again.

Not more than a few hours later after returning from errands I saw a female Anna's hummingbird drinking from the feeder. She was very brave and stayed there even while I was watching our dog Gracie who was seriously thinking about stepping on the frozen pond.

She found a good close and sunny spot to rest on between drinks. If you look closely you can see her beak is open. I wonder if she was thanking me for getting her food?

She later flew up to the apple tree to take in the view of the Cascades from over the neighbors fence.

Another reason I'm glad the neighbors limbed up their Cedar trees, another view to enjoy!

I'd gone back to watching Gracie and heard lots of noise and looked to find that a flock of Bushtits had flown into the yard. After hummingbirds I think they're the smallest visitors we get. They always come in big groups and especially love suet, but discovered the bark butter feeder recently. The hummingbird was quite concerned they were after her food and made lots of noise and protected her feeder.

The Bushtits are very friendly with the other little birds that visit our feeders and usually will be the first to leave if they are getting too crowded. I love how they all tried to find a spot to eat from.

Here are more of them on the suet feeder, lots more were resting in the trees and plants around the pond.

Eventually they left and the hummingbird went back to the trellis to rest. I can't believe how close she let me get. I was probably about 8 feet away and I'm sure I could've gotten closer, but I didn't want to scare her. I didn't do any cropping on this picture or any of the others.

As I was going back inside she flew back to the branches of the Cedar trees. I'm going to bring the feeders in now on these nights where it will be below freezing to keep these birds fed. Anna's hummingbirds are winter residents here and so I try to do my part by having a food source for them. In the end I was rewarded with the best pictures I've ever gotten of one.