Say Hello To My Little Friend

This is my girl friend...  or at least, the little cutie who thinks she owns my back yard.  She perches in the ocotillo, in the lemon tree (shown above), on the wire hanger where Archie used to sit (she's shown below), and pretty much anywhere she pleases.  She's tame enough, that I can go in and out of the door, 3 feet away, (slowly) and she doesn't fly away anymore.

 She's quite feisty, fending off other hummingbirds of various species and both sexes, as they intrude upon her nectar feeders, aloe, snap dragons, lavenders, bougainvilleas, esperanzas, pansies, tecoma stans, honey suckle, hibiscus, and lemon tree blossoms.  She's also got an affinity for spiders, or spider mites, which I watched her pluck off the pool fence yesterday, from their little webs.



And she loves the camera, posing, often.  This pic (shown right), I took from 3 feet away from her, with the door open, looking up - I'm glad she didn't fly INTO the house to check out the red couch.... the octogenarian cats would've had a field day trying to catch a hummingbird. 

I am not sure if she's a Black Chinned, an Anna's, or a Costa's hummingbird, being a young female - introduce me to her father and I could tell you! - but she is adorable, and has quite a fun personality.  I was sitting with my back to the grill earlier this week, and she flew to within 2 feet of me, saw I was drinking a lemonade, and then flew to the potted snap dragons (that were the same color as my lemonade) and drank heartily from them, within reaching distance of me.  When I gathered up the lavender on Monday, she drank all she could from the vases that I left outside in the shade before I brought them in after dark.  I think she knows who her "sugar daddy" is - LOL!  (nectar..  sugar..   get it?  DOH!   =P )

Much better than SNL's Seth Meyer's (accurate) reference to thrice retired now injured chronic pain in the neck Favre "say hello to my little friend" .. though I did enjoy Seth's Weekend Update =)