The Final Prize - The Ruby Throat Return

       After a few very nice days, we are now expecting another week of temperatures right around the freezing mark. It really is a tease to have little snippets of Spring, with plants starting to pop through the ground, and then right back to Winter again. Spring is coming though in my neck of the woods, and there's absolutely nothing that compares. I still have drifts of snow that are 2 ft high in areas of the garden, but in one month things will be dramatically different. The white on the ground will suddenly be transformed to green, and the silence in the yard will be transformed to songs of many species. You can smell it in the air, you can hear it throughout the garden, you can see it in many forms and you can feel it in the soul. It's life that springs forth so quickly, and triggers all the senses, and absolutely nothing across the planet can compare to the emergence of Spring. We'll be listening to every chirp and song, hoping to identify familiar ones from the past, and possibly some new ones as well, but all of this new life will lead up to the final prize when we finally see the return of our tiny little friends, the Ruby-throat hummingbirds. 
       This is Gunner, our dominant male Ruby throat from last year. He had several perches around the garden, and unless you knew of them, he could be incredibly difficult to find. 

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