It was only in the high 40s this morning, so I stood outside with my hand of peanuts waiting for a chickadee to land. I didn’t use the fingerless gloves, thinking it might scare them.

They landed elsewhere on the seed trays. I put some of the food in the house. A chickadee hops on my hand, gets a peanut, takes off. Unfortunately, I am standing almost directly under the hummingbird feeder, and the next time a chickadee tries to land, the hummer flies in at the same time. Of course it startles me, which frightens the chickadee, but it comes back. All told, there were five landings, possibly the same brave one.

Meanwhile, Sparky the hummer is only inches away, feeding happily. He’s made of sterner stuff than I. When I watered down some of the plants earlier, he darted back and forth waiting for an opportune moment to leap into the water. Once I realized what he wanted, I turned the spray down, and he got on an outer limb of the bougainvillea, and just reveled in his shower. I went inside for a hoodie to go over my sweatshirt.

There are plans for him, especially now that I’ve stuck my hand out and he looks at it curiously without backing away. Over the weekend I got a smaller hummingbird feeder, the kind that goes into potted plants. I just haven’t figured out how to get photos of all this yet.