106 thoughts on ““Stand Still Like a Hummingbird.” Henry Miller

  1. jalal michael sabbagh.http://gravatar.com/jmsabbagh86@gmail.com

    Hi Cindy ,these are breathtaking pictures.Cheers.jalal

  2. Actually, I have never seen a hummingbird perched except in your photos, but the floating in mid-air thing is fascinating to watch! Cute little poem to go with your beautiful photos, Cindy!

    1. They are just stunning creatures. It shocks me to look at them without telephoto some times because it reminds me how small they are. Great things come in small packages~

    1. Isn’t just a remarkable gift how tame they become. The hummingbirds are roadrunner are like part of our family. The roadrunner is always watching me. Hilarious. He’s people watching~

      1. 🙂 My time in the desert was never complete with out a Roadrunner sighting 🙂 oh how my Dad loved that cartoon he was a very funny but smart ass type lol I get that from HIM lol
        Love my critters truckers used to call me Ellie Mae 🙂

      2. Elllie May was a cutie among those Clampetts, in her daisy dukes!! You and I must be exactly the same age. Remember Miss Hathaway?? What a crack up. She needed to drink more of Granny’s moonshine to lighten up. What was the guy who was going to “be a brain surgeons” name? Jethro… We are definitely Holler hillbillies and proud of it too!! lol! Stop on by for some possum pie~

  3. Technical questions: lense? shutter speed? F-stop? We have worked on developing a variety of plants with flower from March through September when the humming birds settle around our field. We usually hear them buzz past us before we spot which flowers they are sampling. While lore had humming birds coming to red flowers (which they do like), we find them on just about any color flower that has necture. In constrast, the toad which I post photos of today could sit still for days at a time, except to croak for love.
    Oscar

    1. LOL!! But do you know about cattle???? 🙂 Yes, I tried to stay with a consistent color scheme at The Holler, blues and purples and pinks and the hummingbirds are all over the place. Of course nature adds her own colors, such a orange California poppies. The hummingbirds aerial combat is hilarious to watch. They are lethal little guys. As far as technical aspects of the shots, my Sony HX300 deserves all the credit. It is truly amazing technology. It has a 50X lens. I set it on automatic for the hummingbirds because the Sony knows best. The only thing I adjust is the zoom. The HX300 came out in April of this year and I snagged one before the formal release. My other camera is also a Sony.
      I love your blog and your life. So impressed with your sustainability~

      1. Thanks for reading (and back reading, which can get overwhelming). 50X zoom! Wow! We upgraded our digital cameras last year prior to going on our South Africa safari. I’m really not a die-hard photographer, but enjoy capturing images of the landscape around us. I have just recently started using “photography” as a tag on posts. I plan to go back and edit prior posts that included photography as a tag to make finding those easier for folks interested in this. Gotta go. Goat and ducks want to be fed… berries await picking… and we start County Fair season this evening at the FFA stock sale. I’ll get around to writing about chest freezers one of these days. 🙂

  4. Just this morning I found a tiny feather. The length maybe and inch, but maybe the width of a pencil. I think it might belong to one of the baby birds in the nest in the front bushes – it is just grey and not irridesent. It wasn’t a down feather though. Hmmm…I wonder if I can find bird identification through feathers via google or bing? Until then I’ll just add it to my feather jar. 🙂

    I think I did see a humming bird near one of my butterfly bushes the other day….

    Lovely photos. 🙂

    1. Oh yes they love butterfly bushes!! I have lots of them. You could try to type the feather identifiers into google and see what you get. Google has yet to fail me~

  5. Hummingbird flying away
    My dream of seeing it with my own eye
    That it hovers in mid-air
    Must see it’s a fact in reality

    Children’s book never lies
    So there must be a bird within reach
    So tiny but colorful like flowers
    It’s itself is a flower approaching another

    Sweet nectar for reward
    Ultimate happiness of the true world
    Everyone has his or her world
    Wherein tied together for happiness pursued

    One thing after another of the mundane life
    Yet the dream of excursion never forgotten
    If it flies away, I’ll fly faster
    With the heart of decades ago

    1. WOW!! THis is why I LOVE blogging. Talented, creative, kind people like you! Bravo. You have touched my soul. Thank you for such kindness. The hummingbirds thank you too! Fly, Fly faster~

  6. I am so envious, Cindy. I’ve seen only one hummer at the new house and only once at that…, and that was before I put out the feeder!

    The photos are beautiful, especially the one at rest.
    Liked them all, but that one the best.
    Hugs, Cuz…

      1. The LilyCat loves birds. She sits at the window and talks to them all the time. The finches and chickadees have no fear of her as they will come right up to the window feeder with her there.

    1. I daresn’t say (love this word, is it a word?) because I am going to post on it and I don’t want to wreck the, errrrr….. suspense? Methinks I am over-estimating the qualities of my suspensefulness (is this a word? I love it too). I am not a bewitching writer of tales like you, so I need all the props I can get. This is a belabored way of saying….come back and find out!! LOL!

      1. You definitely have your own magic! I love your pictures. I’ll come and look again soon. Snakes ought to be elusive and hard to track down. In fact, not seen or heard would work for me. I don’t mind pictures, though.

    1. Yes. I can imagine him watching the hummingbirds hover with invisible wings, since they beat so fast, seeing them as if standing still in the air. Awesomeness~

    1. I share your amazement with the natural world. It clarifies that we are simply a very small part of the world of nature. This is very calming for me. Thank you for your kind comments~

    1. That makes me really happy. I always imagine my photos for children. They have the natural wonder and I would be thrilled to see his reactions. Thank you and him!!

    1. They pretty much have Jim and I wrapped around their little birdy toes. Jim will look at me reproachfully, “The feeder is empty….” and I dash out. We make plans to keep it full when traveling. I swear they know it too. They live her year round and are little despots!! lol!

  7. Cindy, how lucky you are to be able to capture these photos. I love Hummingbirds, but they don’t seem to come into my yard. I have seen them in my mom’s yard.

    1. Plant flowers, flowers and more flowers, and you will have hummingbirds, hummingbirds and more hummingbirds! The flowers bring them and the feeder keeps them~

    1. The reader really messes up. It burps and hiccups, and deletes posts and time frames, forgets to put posts you follow in your reader etc. Frustrating to say the least when you miss people you follow posts. It happens to me. They also recently elimated about four days worth of posts from the reader and then they reappeared many hours later.

      1. That’s good to know. I thought I lost a number of blogs after I came back from my two-week vacation. A couple of days ago I sent a complaint through their survey.

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