Random nonplant event: Hummingbird

So I've been trying to take photos of the Salvia elegans I planted in the back, the ones that didn't explode, regularly as they begin to bloom. The objective is not to get a time-lapse sequence of the bloom, though I probably could do that if I really tried, but to keep taking pictures as long as the blooms are continuing to get more abundant, because I worry that if I wait until they're at the absolute peak, that at some point before the plant peaks, we'll get a big windstorm that will tear the plants apart and then I'll have no pictures of anything.

So that's what I was doing outside with the camera.

And, since we're here, this is what they look like as of last Wednesday morning:


As you've likely deduced from the title, while I was out there taking pictures of the Salvia, a hummingbird showed up and began drinking nectar from the flowers. I got horrible photos from the event, but they're good enough to prove that a hummingbird was present, at least:

(It's in the center of the picture.)


From looking around a little bit on-line, the pictures, and memory, I think this was most likely a female ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris).

I didn't plant the pineapple sage specifically to get hummingbirds, and actually I'd pretty much forgotten that hummingbirds were even a possibility -- I see one maybe once a year. So this was a nice bonus. Next year, there will be more plants, and I'll figure out how to protect them from the wind a little better. I'm told hummingbirds remember the locations of food sources from year to year. Don't want to disappoint.