Spring and a first hummingbird!

It was a lovely day spent gardening. Today is Easter for Christians, and even though we're not religious, as a secular holiday, it has symbolism as a time of rebirth.

Spring is here. A newly mown 'lawn', borders and meadow edited of winter annuals, a flourishing vegetable patch, and all's right in the garden.


And now, about to have our dinner with greens and lettuces freshly harvested, looking out my study window, our first ruby-throated hummingbird of the season visited a few of the Carolina Jessamine flowers on the trellis out the window. Hooray!

Finally a first hummingbird!

We've been waiting to see our first ruby-throated hummingbird of the season. They start appearing in our area between late March and early April; this map from Hilton Pond's site shows average times of first sightings here in the Eastern U.S. The first male 'scouts' were reported almost a month ago, and my feeders have been up since then.

So, I was delighted to see a hummingbird visiting Carolina jessamine flowers outside my study window yesterday afternoon.

He didn't stay long at them, visiting just a couple; we have coral honeysuckle and red buckeyes currently in flower that are a lot more to their taste, and later I saw him visiting the large coral honeysuckle near the kitchen door. We saw him again this morning and afternoon, visiting flowers and snapping up insects in the red oak.

No sign of any visiting the feeders yet, but I've got three ready and waiting.

I'm hoping one of 'our' males might return to our garden, to stay and set up his territory. There definitely was a family here last year. We have seemingly great habitat for hummingbirds; lots of hummingbird nectar flowers throughout the season, native trees full of small insects to glean, and plenty of cover for nesting.