Immature male Anna's hummingbird.

The hummingbird is back, looking as gray as the clouds of this sunless afternoon. He sits on a desiccated grape tendril outside my office window and stares at me. If he could, he would chase me off as he does with visiting hummers approaching his feeders. He never does this for very long, because he gets hungry very often, as hummingbirds are wont to do, and is thus easily distracted by the honeysuckle flowers on the eastside of the garden and by passing insects.  

He did buzz me earlier in the afternoon, when I stepped outside to pick ripe figs and apples but was scared off by a Steller's jay who begged for peanuts.

 He is a very young bird, a male Anna's, born this summer in one of our Irish yews, yet he is very self-assured, taking on even his elders and the bigger birds. Now that the rufous hummers have left for the winter, he is the smallest bird in the garden, more diminutive even than the bushtit an kinglets. 

 I hope he holds his own against the inclement weather which is setting in and will last, with occasional sun breaks, until next March or April. I'll do my best to help tide him over by keeping the feeders filled after the flowers fade. After all, it worked last winter when we had our first ever overwintering hummingbirds.