finally a photo

Our hummingbirds starting returning on April 15, so Norris set up the camera on a tripod in the great room and adjusted the feeder to get a good profile shot, but the birds have been pretty timid and don't stay long. Finally, with Cheryl housebound, she waited near the camera, and captured this little guy in the viewfinder -





Norris has marveled that the tiny hummingbird is somehow biologically related to Tina and her especially prehistoric-looking pal Ike*. While Norris was throwing some sunflower seed out for Tina yesterday, Lu managed to escape and chased both Ike and Tina. Ike avoided the issue by walking quickly up the slope, but Tina took off and gracefully flew through the trees, down the slope of our wildflower meadow, and across the road. We were heartened to see she can indeed escape at least a small (but mighty!) predator, but then were concerned Lu's aggression might have taken our yard off the Turkey Safe Haven list. No need to worry, Tina was back and spent much of the rest of yesterday in the woods in back of the house, venturing back to the feeder occasionally. Her feet look about the same as the last time we photographed her. (Cheryl's toe has similarly crippled her for the last week.)

* about the time we figured Tina's "boyfriend" was going to hang around our back yard as much as she did, we started calling him Ike. Ike is so forlorn about Tina, he forgets to eat some days. We read that male turkeys are more "successful" (as in, they produce more offspring) when they do their pursuing in pairs, so although we are getting a lot of lessons in turkey behavior, we're not going to claim any of it is normal.