In the afternoon, I see Ruby-throated Hummingbirds at the  trumpet vine where 
I've seen first one since lat May and then ,since  early this month, two 
daily.  After dinner at about 6:15 a hummer comes to the vine, drinks from a  
single flower for a few seconds, leaves, returns to the same flower, pausing to  
rest on its petals, and then flies to a bare twig in the sun about 7’  from the 
ground and just a foot or so from its last nectar meal.  It perches with its 
back to me and is  still at the same spot fifteen minutes later (after I’d 
just finished  telling my wife that they feed every ten to fifteen minutes 
throughout  the day).  The bird remains on the  same perch in the evening sunlight 
and I watch the shade gradually move up the  bird’s body, an immage that in 
hindsight is a telling omen.  I see it shake itself several  times.  Upon 
returning an hour  later, the bird is still at the same perch with its bill raised 
almost straight  up.  It is quite still.  Another hummer flits past briefly and  
zooms off. 
At 9:40 p.m. when it is quite dark the bird is still perched on the  twig. 
At 11 p.m., the Hummingbird is hanging upside down from the branch and at  
midnight it is laying on the ground!  I place it on the railing of the deck.  At 
9 a.m. the next morning it remains on  the deck railing. 
Resqiat in pacem little  jewelbird. 
Louis Nielsen 
Reisterstown,  MD