Pride, the Fall, and Hummingbirds

A conjunction of household disasters (an empty cupboard, a recalcitrant vacuum cleaner, and a head of curly locks severely in need of a shearing) found me standing in front of our local Wild Birds Unlimited this morning, waiting for Alison to pick me up.

This store has great feeders, invariably covered with Lesser Goldfinches and Mourning Doves, so the wait wasn’t really that much of a hardship. I noticed today, though, that they had added to the feeders hanging from the small mesquite out front one of those insufferably cute bundles of wool scraps, meant to attract nesting birds. Yeah, right. And as I stood there, feeling sorry for the poor saps who buy such things (instead of simply letting the cobwebs build up on their windowsills, which is my strategy), a female Anna’s Hummingbird buzzed in, picked up a wisp of wool, and added it to a nest she was building two trees down.