Winged summer visitors / Murmuration / Aoife O'Donovan

Northern Flicker feeding a young one who soon

after makes the mistake of bumping into my

window before flying away

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Hummingbird and Salvia

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One needs to see this full screen and  then look very 

closely for the starling murmuration at the beginning 

of this video.  Toward the end I zoomed in, making 

it somewhat easier to see the small murmuration.  In 

the last few seconds of filming, I heard the whirring 

sound of a hummingbird and looked up and was startled

to see a hummingbird directly in front of me.  One can

see the equally startled hummingbird flying away at the 

end of the video.  This is the second morning in a row

 that I have looked out my east-facing window and seen

a murmuration and one of many mornings in the past 

week when a hummingbird has flown close to me as 

I stood on my porch, both of us looking around in the 

early morning.

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When the universe is silent we listen with great pleasure to a bird that suddenly sings.

-- Hong Zicheng