Among the many advantages of doing yard work this time of year are close encounters of the Trochilidae kind…  e.g., Missy’s Black-chinned hummingbird is like an attack dog whenever I’m near one of its feeders, and BTW he owns them all.  Rufous to me are different, kind of shy of everything *except* hummers.  I’ve seen BCHU do crazy things, like a female once perched right beside a kestrel, as if taunting it; another got caught in a spider web and literally had to be pried out of it; and I’ve had to peel a BCHU out of the grasp of a large mantis; Nancy Newfield (master bander in Loozianna) has referred to BCHU as cussing faster than any other bird in the West…  😉

There are other advantages of spending hours out on the back forty  ~ ~    like hearing every avian flyby that’s loud enough to be heard  ~ ~ ~   Evening Grosbeaks, kingfishers, herons, ravens, yada yada, none of which are “common” in our hood, although a Screaming Piha (Swanson’s Hawk) has recently moved into the hood.

116 dB they say?     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screaming_piha

This is a beautiful-calm-day here in River City, but yesterday’s weather was more exciting for its birds.  That was a “good storm.”   =)

Larry