One fine spring day three years ago, JC and I were sitting on his deck sipping a glass of wine when we heard the familiar humming vibration of a Hummingbird. We looked up and saw an amazingly beautiful, golden bronze hummer hovering in front of a red plastic tip on an aluminum ladder leaning against the wall.
“Wow!” I said, “Did you see that?”
“That was incredible! I'm going to grab my camera.”
JC refilled one of his Hummingbird feeders with fresh sugar water and hung it from the corner of the awning near the ladder. Then he brought out his Canon SLR digital camera and got it ready, pre-focused on the feeder. Naturally the little guy was a no-show for the rest of the afternoon.
The next day I brought my little Fuji camera along and JC had his Canon mounted on a tripod so he could get a steady shot. We were deep into a discussion about who knows what, when the golden hummer darted in for a quick sip of sugar water. By the time we fumbled around to our cameras he was gone. From then on it became a game of when we had our cameras ready he wouldn't show up. If we left the cameras inside he would take his time and tease us by posing on the lip of the feeder. Once when JC went inside for something the little guy flew over the table and hovered there over JC's camera. JC even purchased a remote shutter release so all he would have to do to take a picture was move his finger. By the end of summer I had one fuzzy picture that almost showed his colors in the sunlight and JC had a decent one taken on a cloudy day, but neither showed what he really looked like.
Although a lot of Hummingbirds came to the feeders, and some even got their pictures taken, we didn't see the Golden bird for several years and we assumed that he was one of a kind and long gone.
Yesterday, almost exactly three years later, while we were enjoying a rare sunny day on the deck, the Golden Hummingbird, or probably one of his progeny, returned in all his glory. We are getting the cameras ready.
Let the games begin!
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