Every summer around the Fourth of July the feisty little Rufous hummingbirds show up here. The males are orange all over with a beautiful shimmering orange throat.



All hummingbird males guard the feeders and chase off the other males, so the yard is chaotic anyway, but the Rufous is more so, and nobody has a good time for the month that he is here. The females look like the broadtail females - green back, light grayish underside, but they have a little bit more of the orange tinging around the edges, referred to as rufous.

All male hummingbirds make some kind of noise when they fly, the wind whistling through special feathers on their wings. Every species is different. Our broad tails emit a very high-pitched whistle, and the Rufous's sound is more of a low buzz.

This morning I heard a bird strike the front picture window and looked out to see a little hummer lying on the paving stone. I went out and flipped him over in case he could recover. Turned out he was a Rufous - the first I've seen this season, and right on schedule. He sat out there for about 30 minutes and eventually recovered enough to fly away.

When they are injured or dead their throats turn black - all the pretty shimmer is gone, and this was the case with him, but as he got better his throat glowed brighter and brighter.