Kind of sad today. I had to deal with another hummingbird death. This was one that regularly used the feeder outside my kitchen window. I knew something was wrong because yesterday I had seen it perched on the feeder looking a bit worse for wear - it's feathers were messed up and it was breathing heavily. I went outside to have a closer look, and it didn't fly away - which is unusual. My first thought was this was a good opportunity to take a photo of a hummingbird, so I went inside to fetch my phone and returned outside. But this time the bird flew into the nearby tree, so I assumed it was just a bit tired and everything was okay again. But later in the day as I was topping up the water in my feeders, I noticed the same hummingbird on the ground underneath the feeder. It did not look in a good state. It was alive, but barely. Didn't know what to do. Should I try to help it, or should I put it out of its suffering. I picked it up with the plan of taking it to the feeder. And that's when I noticed it had a leech or a slug attached underneath it. Not good. I removed it, but there was blood. Yikes. The bird was still alive, but not for long. I wonder if I could have done better - I don't think I could have done anything to save it, but I wonder if I could have eased it's suffering earlier. The moral of the story - don't ask me to make any end of life decisions. But on the bright side, just this evening I saw a different hummingbird using that same feeder outside my kitchen window. Hummingbirds are extremely territorial, so it didn't take long for another one to claim this feeder.
