I don’t usually post back to back about the same subject, but this summer has been full of hummingbirds! I’ve never had so many around, and they are all very focused on feeding as much as they can as fast as they can.

This female was buzzing around some ornamental yuccas.

She worked those yuccas until she was full to bursting. Look at how big her tummy is!

Fun fact: hummingbird feet are so tiny that they can’t walk anywhere. They fly, then they perch.

This is from the next day as I was trying to work in my garden. The hummers have very much lost their fear of humans — they zip right in front of me. I took advantage of their single-minded feeding and got my camera.

This one came rocketing towards me, only to screech to a halt just a few feet away. I’ve never seen the little feathers in her “arm pits” deployed like that before. I think they are acting as air brakes.

She paused only for a moment to make sure the big clumsy human didn’t get in her way, then shot off so close to me that I felt the air from her wings.

I turned around and saw that she had dove into a thicket of flowers. I didn’t think I was going to get any good shots because she was so far down into the foliage, and moving sooo fast in her feeding frenzy. But I got lucky.