Here in Colorado, spring feels official when male Broad-tailed Hummingbirds give their trilling sound over our homes, parks, and open spaces.
But our climate always has other plans. Frosts and blizzards are not unusual deep into May.
And winds.
Winds.
Today brought gusts up to 75 mph. Thankfully, all of my trees held, having shed the equivalent of a small tree worth of branches in previous wind and late-winter snow storms.
About a week or so ago, during another wind storm, I went to the High Line Canal Trail outside Denver. I was looking for a pair of Eastern Phoebes (more on that in another post), but also just looking to see who endured the wind.
Weighing roughly the same as two pennies, Broad-tailed Hummingbirds — like all hummingbirds — are ferocious bundles of muscle and air.
This one has claimed a chokecherry thicket along the Canal Trail. (Every year, this chokecherry thicket is claimed by a Broad-tailed Hummingbird. Not sure if it’s the same one.)
Watching him stay perched in a wind was remarkable. Occasionally, he had to surrender to the blasts and let them take him where they took him. But he’d come tearing back, claiming his throne again.
(Photos taken on two different days.)
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