And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
—Excerpt from “A Prayer in Spring” by Robert Frost
I remember my first hummingbird well. I had just arrived here from Wales and was taken out to do some birding by my host. I hadn’t done my homework and so was ignorant of which birds to expect. Hummingbirds seemed incredibly exotic to me, some vision that you might see in the tropics, and so I was stunned when Paul, my host, casually pointed out a bird and said, “There’s an Anna’s hummingbird.” Hummingbirds! And I was going to live among them.
We are fortunate on the West Coast to have several species of hummingbirds that migrate through our area, and to have a few that live here year-round. Easterners wait ’til spring for hummers to return, and then they are graced by only one species, the ruby-throated.