The Howell Blessings

A single hummingbird amazingly sits still while feeding. The perched hummingbird defended his spot, which was the entire feeder, all day. He chased off several other birds as they would attempt to come in to feed. I captured this split second shot right before the defending bird chased off his intruder. The other birds took advantage of the freqent chases to come and take a few sips before they got caught. Wow, it's been fun watching the little tiny, and territorial, hummingbirds this summer. I have a feeder just outside our sunroom window. One rainy Sunday afternoon I sat for a couple of hours with my camera poised and captured some pretty neat shots of the chases and steals this day of the numerous hummingbirds that came to feed, or tried to feed. I must have taken 50 or so pictures this Sunday afternoon, many of which turned out blurry because these tiny and fascinating creatures fly so fast! I thought I'd share just a few of my favorite pictures.. Enjoy.

We've had quite the flurry of activity this spring and summer. To our knowledge we've had at least 4 new deer families. One mama deer would "drop her baby off" every morning and then pick it back up in the afternoon. The beautiful fawn would eat for a little bit (yes in my gardens) then lay quietly all day waiting for mom's return. Later on we had a mama and her twin fawns. We got to watch those fawns grow up and begin to loose their spots. Now the twins show up without mama. Just recently we've been host to a mama and her triplets. We've only seen them a few times. The most recent is a mama and her twins. We are wondering if this may be the mama with triplets but may have lost one. This mama has some serious injuries to her leg and chest, yet we caught her playing "get 'cha" with her fawns a few weekends ago, even though it was obvious that she was in pain by the limping when she walked and the big gash on her leg and chest. Thought I'd ...