A Hummingbird in My Hair

It’s a perfect day in Tucson, warm and bright and calm. Too lazy to actually go anywhere, I’ve been sitting on the back porch reading about Italy and watching the birds: Lucy’s Warblers are moving through in good numbers today, and there’s a mild dispute playing out between the Cactus Wrens and the Abert’s Towhees about the ownership of the newly filled suet feeders.

One of our female Anna’s Hummingbirds has led her still dependent fledgling into the big mesquite over the porch, where it squeaks and screams until she returns to plunge food down its noisy throat.

A lump only a hummingbird mother could love.

She’s been capturing insects all morning, often just a few feet from my chair, but I was utterly unprepared to have her fly up and hover in my face, then land in my hair for a second.

I’m reasonably certain that there’s nothing edible up there, but wonder whether this might not be a sign that I should finally yield to my barber’s urging to a dye job: she apparently mistook the distinguished gray of these curly locks for cobwebs, material for the nest she’ll start to build once she gets rid of that annoying teenager piping at her from the mesquite.