I have something very special to share today, from kestrel. I’ll let her tell the story,

The other day I was working near the scarlet runner beans when I saw a hummingbird behaving a little strangely. 

You might think, “But that’s what hummingbirds do – drink from flowers!” And I would agree with you. The strange thing was, this hummingbird was behaving like this right next to me. I took these with my phone! 

As I observed the hummingbird more closely (this is a Western Broad-Tailed Hummingbird, I believe a juvenile male) he seemed exhausted. He is in one of my pens for chickens. It’s got a net over the top, to keep predators out of my chickens, but hummingbirds can easily fly down through the net. Most are intelligent enough to then fly back UP through the net, but this one I suspected had been in there for quite a while, due to being young and silly, and not knowing about that flying up thing. 

Yep. Looks pretty exhausted. So, I went in there, and was able to walk up to him and pick him up in my hand. I carried him out of the pen and took him over to the hummingbird feeder. He acted like a trained pet parrot; he stood perched quietly on my finger, and when I brought him to the feeder, he very calmly stepped onto the feeder like he had been doing that his whole life. 

Once on the feeder, he sunk his beak in all the way and then drank for over a minute. No dainty sipping here; I think this guy was near the end of his reserves. I stood by the feeder to stop any other hummingbird from chasing him away, until he was able to fly away on his own. Fly well, little bird, and remember, “up” is a direction too!