Hummingbird guards hibiscus

I had a meeting at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers visitor's center at Caesar Creek Lake in southwest Ohio's Warren County yesterday. We convened to plan the 2023 Midwest Native Plant Conference, and it should be another doozy. As I've not had a chance to shoot much lately, I got down that way at sunrise, and wandered into a productive patch that I knew about. It wasn't long before I heard the rich warble of a Blue Grosbeak. While I had great studies through binoculars, the melodious animal never cooperated for images.

A great consolation was this female Ruby-throated Hummingbird. I had noticed three hummers aerially jousting on occasion, and as luck would have it, I found a favored perch for one of the sprites. Unfortunately, she chose a branch of the horribly invasive Amur Honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii), but hey, we can't have everything.

She apparently chose her perch as it overlooked a nice patch of this plant, Swamp Rose Mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos). This photo is from elsewhere but offers a perspective of the scope and scale of this huge native mallow. If one of the rival hummingbirds came too near, she dashed out and drove it from the vicinity.

The hummingbird spent time apparently gleaning small insects from the flowers, as well as tapping nectar. The latter action was hard to shoot, as the flowers were mostly not angled my way. When she entered the flower, she'd more or less completely disappear inside the giant cuplike bloom. I had to wonder what it must be like, to be a tiny bird entering a flower much larger than you are. It would strike me as a surreal Alice in Wonderland sort of experience, basically akin to going into a flower fort.

What I would have given to have had pink flowers (Hibiscus moscheutos varies in flower color) angled just like this! What a hummingbird shot that would have made! Ah well, it wasn't possible to get this perspective yesterday, due to the swampy terrain and other factors.

But now that I know of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds' apparent fondness for the flowers of this gorgeous native mallow, I can probably bag such a shot in the future. Yet another photographic bucket list item added.