April Fool

I was standing looking out of the kitchen window on Saturday evening, when I saw my first hummingbird of the year. It flew close for a brief inspection of the metal hummingbird mobile hanging on the porch, and then flew away. I immediately made up a batch of sugar solution, filled the hummingbird feeders, and hung one on the porch and one on the back deck.

When I woke up on Sunday morning at 7:00 AM, it was snowing, and the feeder on the deck looked like this -- now you'll understand the title of my blip.

By noon the snow had melted, and we had birds imbibing at both feeders. At first there was a male at each one, and at one point I saw a brief skirmish between two males at the back feeder. Later in the afternoon a female was taking turns there with a male.

I never tire of taking photos of these tiny birds. The males are so colorful and bold. If you wear anything red, orange, or pink, they're liable to hover right in front of you and try to make you back down. They must think they're as big as hawks.

The gorget feathers of the male are possibly the most intensively iridescent feathers known in birds. The color can change from pale yellow-green through orange and scarlet, to black, depending on the angle of reflected light. These photos are all of the same bird, taken in an interval of a few minutes.

Hummingbirds feed on flower nectar and small insects. If you look at the blip photo large, you can see an insect stuck on the side of the bird's beak.