Patience

They are not afraid of me.

Half the time they do not even see me.

But after twenty minutes of sitting in the hot sun

And getting the awful photos below, I moved to a more camouflauged area.

Nice one, Tabor, on the zinnia...too bad you missed the bird!

This little plastic stool stained with paint projects was moved to the shaded shelter of my guara plant.  While there are those that seem to think I have good padding in my sitting area, sitting on one of these for a while is painful.

The guara plant behind in this photo puts out little butterfly pinkish flowers at the ends of long stalks.

This plant has more than outgrown its place.  It starts out small and delicate and then tricks you by taking over the bed.

The little pink flowers bob in the wind, hard to photograph.

The hummingbirds do not seem to have trouble drinking from them, though.

Anyway, I sat, closer to the Zinnias, crouching under this quara and a hummer comes buzzing by.

In slow motion they fly like ballerinas.  To my human eye they fly like bombers or bullets with great maneuverability.

I lift my camera slowly to capture him hovering just above a zinnia.  Snap!  He is not in the capture!

He suddenly turns and flies my way.

He pauses just a foot from the top of my head.

I hold my breath, do not move, too close he hangs for any camera shot. Is he wondering what this odd dark shape is beneath the guara plant?  I hear the hummmmmm.

Then he does a close fly over and I can feel the breath of his wings on my hair and I can hear him buzzing just behind my head, perhaps drinking from all those pink blossoms?

I dare not turn.  I wait like a statue.

Finally his sound disappears and I am alone again patiently waiting for a photo opportunity.

He eventually returns.

I have the camera on the sports setting and therefore the afternoon light is too bright, so I get this grainy shot of him resting on the dying sunflower.  If you look closely (well, really really closely) he has yellow pollen on the end of his bill.

Then he is off again to my zinnias.

Not up to National Geographic standards, but at least you can recognize that it is a hummer!