![]() My local black-chins do an enormous U-shaped nose-diving dance in spring, and sometimes they fly rapidly back and forth in front of the bird/human they wish to intimidate/impress. They also perform amazing in-flight aggression/mating (also like mobsters, the line between those two is kinda hazy for hummers) displays. ![]() To be standing in the middle of this action is utterly engrossing. ![]() They’ll strafe your head or pass mere inches in front of your face in pursuit of an enemy stealing nectar from THEIR feeder. Imagine having a garden or yard filled with enormous pollinators that can hover in front of a flower motionless or zip off in the blink of an eye, who squabble with each other endlessly and get into ear-piercing chirpy dogfights before your very eyes, and sometimes literally right in front of them. For those of you not fortunate enough to live on continents with hummingbirds, let me give a taste of how enormously entertaining these birds that have become insects can be. They act like mobsters when not atop the tree too. Big is probably more than one bird, but I call them that because the males like to sit up there on their sprucey throne, lording over their domain and flicking their heads from right to left, left to right, like nervous mobsters. Credit: Don Faulkner Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)īehind my house is a blue spruce, at the tip top of which is the favorite perch of my local black-chinned hummingbird, Mr. A black-chinned hummingbird shows off its iridescent violet neck feathers, visible only when the light hits them just right. ![]()
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