I sat outside this afternoon to do some reading and noticed the honeybees coming to the bird bath for water. I never realized before yesterday that they did that, and now every time I look, there’s a honeybee at the bird bath. We put some rocks in there for resting places for them, so they have a place to dry off if they fall in and their wings get wet. I saw a squirrel jump from the electric wire to a sycamore limb, where he soon laid himself lengthwise along a limb that fit him perfectly to take a nap. And best of all, as I sat there a hummingbird came not 3 feet in front of me and sat on an elm branch, sat still there for a moment. Here is what T. Gilbert Pearson says of the ruby-throated hummingbird in Birds of America (1917):

“It is a dainty little atom of bird-life, and is of exquisite beauty. No other bird can be mistaken for it, its nearest counterpart in nature being the sphinx moth that sometimes comes about flowers of summer evenings. One usually sees this bird when like a great iridescent bee it whizzes across the yard, or pauses before the nectar-bearing flowers of the garden. …
The nest is a wonderful creation of plant down, covered with lichens and bound together with spider web or fine plant fibers. It is about the size of an English walnut and is saddled on a small limb from twelve to thirty feet from the ground….”