Four Punkins

We had a hummingbird feeder up all summer, but as far as I know we only ever had one bird using it. He visited nearly every day, just as the sun was coming up and again right around sunset. The light was never good enough to get a clear picture, but I suspect he was a black-chinned hummingbird. Then a couple of weeks ago I suddenly realized he was gone. The level of liquid in the feeder wasn’t dropping anymore, and I couldn’t remember the last time I opened my back door to see him there. I don’t know why it never occurred to me before, but of course hummingbirds don’t stick around through the winter. They don’t congregate in noisy gaggles like the Canada geese are right now. They don’t traverse the sky in the shape of a V, but they still have to make the trip to Mexico when the weather becomes inhospitable.