Oh Dark Thirty

by Dara Ahrens
(Sequim, WA)

This will have been my second year of feeding the Anna hummingbirds in Sequim, Washington. It was cold, dark, moist, and I would not be denied this morning either.

I call it Oh Dark Thirty in the morning. You know, a time no other human would like to be awake. It is the best time to be awake with your thoughts and not have them interrupted by other adults looking for their coffee cup right where they left it by the coffee maker, and the dog to scare off the birds you've been up for hours waiting for. Those kinds of things.

I had slinked out to my deck, set up my Sony a6000 on the Tripod my wonderful husband had gotten me for Christmas this past year in 2014. He knew that from having to stop every 500 feet to photograph every flower and weed that sucked water from the ground, that I Needed something other than an IPad to photograph with.

I could hear her incoming tick call alert. I dropped my coffee cup, gleeked myself, and readied my aim. She came in and landed on the feeder. She was a beauty in the dark of the morning. She was beautifully divine as she took up her posing positions for me. I was taken. I caught her with her mouth open singing to me. She must be singing a love song to me. Surely it couldn't be the other, telling me what she thought of me in her feeding area. They never express That kind of displeasure I thought.

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