Attack of the Hummingbirds!

I was in the desert for the last five days.

Some friends there have a couple of hummingbird feeders and I managed to get pictures of those amazing little things! 

If you've ever seen hummingbirds in action, you know they just zip around at super fast speed.  Hard to get a close look.

I saw five or six different ones, I think.

Most of them actually stopped and perched for 30 seconds or so to load up with nectar from the feeder.

Most of them have quite striking colors, but some of them are relatively plain.  I wonder if the females are the plain ones - that's the case for most bird species, I believe.

Look at how large their wingspan is.  When you see them fly, their wings are going so fast they look like dragonfly wings.  But they're pretty conventional once you see them sitting still.

I saw this cool green one a number of times.

Lookit his little claws.

You can see this one's tongue out of his bill.  They use their tongues to drink.

I wonder if they ever sleep.

This was one of the coolest ones, but it was also very hard to photograph.  He wouldn't land on the feeder - he would just suspend himself over it and feed.

This one also did the 'flying while feeding' thing.

Aside: all of these hummingbird pictures made me think of my hummingbird toy.  (I wrote that post six years ago!)

Here's that purple-headed one actually feeding.  Look at those wings go!