I grew up in Florida with a sea full of sharks & dolphin. Yards full of snakes, spiders and alligators. I’ve lived in the tropics with giant millipedes longer than your arm and lizards as large as lawn chairs. But I have never seen the elusive American hummingbird.

I’ve planted everything they love – bee balm, crocosmia, red hot poker…you name it. Nary a one! Other people have seen them in my yard. My visiting mother sitting on my front porch said, “Oh you just missed a hummingbird” when I walked out to join her. SURE I did! My husband bought me a window mounted feeder thinking I could see them from the kitchen. Well, the ants LOVED it! One night while having dinner on our deck I saw my boys staring fixedly over my shoulder and my husband told me to turn around slowly. As I turned my head towards the feeder – “poof” it was gone! I never even got a glimpse of the elusive little monster.

A Colorado cousin recently posted a video of her son feeding a hummingbird out of his little 5 yr old cupped hand – obviously in an effort to mock me. I torture myself by looking at endless hummingbird videos on instagram and believe me there are many.

So I recently went out and got 3 different types of feeders. I have strategically placed them from all available vantage points. These hummingbird whispers on the internet get swarms. Can’t I even get one?! Surely this will work. I am embarrassed to admit that I even set up a Nest cam pointed on one. Really quite pointless since I keep forgetting to look at it.

Yesterday I went outside in the late afternoon to make sure I hadn’t thrown my purse in the recycle bin (that is a story for another blog) and as I was slamming down the lid and turning to walk away I swear I saw a blur out of the corner of my eye hovering by a feeder – it zipped away almost immediately.

It is clear that the hummingbird is the windmill to my Don Quixote. I’m pretty sure they are conspiring right now about how to keep jusssst out of my line of vision.