Get Thee to a Nunnery

There is just no other way to put it. I've lived in this house for three years and I have yet to see a male hummingbird. I live in Shenandoah County's only hummingbird convent.

Around here we only get Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds, so it's quite easy to tell males from females. If they have a red throat, they're males. If not, they're females.

I haven't seen a male hummingbird since The House That Shall No Longer Be Named. They are rather dapper fellows and their female counterparts just don't have the bling they do.

Nor do the females dive bomb each other -- at least not around here. The good sisters simple file in for their evening meal, sup quietly, then murmur their way through vespers.


I suppose I could have missed the males. It's quite obvious that my days of sitting at my computer writing and looking out at my bird feeder are long gone. I hadn't seen a new bird show up at the feeder in over a year. But three years?

Our regulars come and go, but every now and then we get a migrating bird that we've never seen before -- Grosbeaks, Waxwings, Tree Sparrows. When I was at my computer all day, I was there to capture it.

These days I'm around to see the morning inundation of finches and the evening visits of the woodpeckers. The Sisters of Perpetual Humming come and go all day.

We have had one new visitor this year that decided to stay. It all started with a sound. I kept thinking someone had dumped a kitten on us and it had crawled into the bushes.

Hence, the name "Catbird."

To be honest, he's a rather unremarkable fellow, but for one thing.

He looks like he's wearing a toupee*.

*I apologize for the horrible photo. Don't ask me what happened to my telephoto lens -- I'll just burst into tears...