You can always tell when it's spring in Northern Cali.
Working in the garden is taking your life in your hands. The hummingbirds start body slamming each other in your face or up against the back of your head. Get 3-6 of them going at it and you need to wear goggles to work.
I have one that follows me around the garden watching what I'm doing from about 2 feet away. Some mornings she watches me in the kitchen through a window. There are 3 others that patrol patches of flowers around the property. When we pass into their patrol areas all watermelon breaks loose. Besides boom and zoom body slams that sometimes miss and hit me, these tiny birds have big arse loud mouths when they get pissed. They hover up next to my ears and get enormously shrill at each other.
The males still havent shown up yet. These are all females. The males get terratorial about anything I do in the garden. It's alot of fun to be up on a ladder pruning bottle brush limbs when one of the males parks himself in front of my nose while my arms are over my head. He will hover about 3 inches from my face and threaten me if I move. Or if I'm working on the ground he will zoom my head doing flybys. The males will chase bluejays, attack finches on the bird feeders, and worst of all beat the crap out of my cat. I tried to separate them once because it was embarrasing to watch the cat loose. The hummingbird just switched to me and my cat hid under the porch.
If the cat is sitting in an open window, the hummingbirds will start flying at him. My bedroom window has a magnolia tree outside of it. Some times one of them will sit on branch and tease him by flying at the window, then going back to perching on a branch. Because of the screen the cat cant get at the hummingbird, he gets so frustrated he starts gurgeling and chirping like he's choking. Nice little birds........................ ..
