Steve and Judy's Travels!

At about 50 beats per second.

The charming little creatures are so focused on food that a person can stand right next to the hanging feeder, and they will continue to buzz about all around and in front of that person’s head.  A tiny cacophony of chattering, buzzing of the wings, and the occasional splat as two birds meet midair, each vying for the right to feed exclusively at the nearby never-ending food source.  (And while they’re battling, ten other birds are standing quietly on the feeder eating.)  High drama.  And nerves of steel required of the observer to stand in the middle of such an intense random dart game without flinching.

The orange, red, and yellow colors are attractive to hummingbirds.  The long tubular flowers, that never open any more than this, are not available to anyone else, but perfectly suited to hummingbirds.

Here is a native yellow Esperanza.  Also known as a yellow bell.

Same big trumpet shaped flowers.

And, bonus, a big black carpenter bee.  A good pollinator.

Pretty much solitary.  They don’t live in hives like honeybees.  They make their nest holes in exposed wood.  That’s why they’re called carpenter bees.  Not a problem unless the exposed wood happens to be on your house.

The ones in our yard are orange.

I read a news story about a group of software engineers who, targeted by a cost cutting measure, got laid off and replaced by an AI agent.  They got together and wrote an AI package intended to replace a CEO.  Open source.  Free access for anyone to evaluate or upgrade.  “A senior advisor with Harvard MBA level knowledge.”  It’s an assemblage of eight different AI roles for strategy, finance, human resources, operations, marketing, product, and communications, all operating in concert.

AI can’t write this.  It takes skilled experienced software engineers to accomplish such an involved task.  A turnabout indeed.