I got to pet a hummingbird
Oct 29, 2008 
Yes, that’s a hummingbird drinking from my finger. Moments before this photo was taken, my husband rescued her. Apparently she took a wrong turn into a house we rented at the Russian River and Mike found her, totally and utterly exhausted from beating her wings like bejesus while trying to fly out of a sealed skylight.
Mike has a proud history of daring bird rescues that I get kind giddy about, and this time was no different. He sprung into action, calmly scooped the bird onto the end of the broom, and brought her outside. When she wouldn’t fly away, he made up a sugar-water mixture. And when the bird wouldn’t drink it herself, Mike started dipping his finger into the water and dripping it onto her beak. After pounding the sugar-water like it was Natty Light on Spring Break, the creature finally got her wits together and hummed off, back into the wild.
Sir David Attenborough himself couldn’t have done any better.
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Reader Comments (3)
So lovely! You are living out one of my childhood dreams - or even, for that matter, one of my current dreams!
WOW! What a once in a lifetime experience! I'm so happy for you that you got a picture of it! We rented a house on the Russian River once, but our only wildlife adventures were with our dogs, swimming across, and getting canoed across, the river.
I love the hummingbird love. They really do cast a spell on all of us.
And Christi, our other wildlife adventure was putting our dog in the kayak with us. She was very unsure of the whole thing but managed to look very regal.