Magical Morning Moment

Back from being away for a few days and doing the morning ritual of filling the feeders- new suet cake, fill the sunflower seed feeder, and make up a new batch of sugar water for the hummers. Suet feeder has a Red-bellied on it a few minutes after I go inside to get the cooled off sugar water for the hummingbird feeder. I head outside to the deck, take the hummingbird feeder down, unscrew the bottle and turn it upright to fill it, and as I'm doing that a female Ruby-throated Hummingbird appears six inches away from the bottle and hovers, close enough so I can feel the breeze from her wings. She flies away, but just to a branch a few feet away to watch me putting the feeder back up on its hook. They're starting to fuel up in preparation for their long migration across the Gulf of Mexico south to Mexico; they'll lose a third of their body weight during the flight.