I’ve been told that hummingbirds are really attracted to red and that if I wore something red I might be able to get them to fly closer to me. This was the best I got last weekend:
The fact that my neighbor was also outside and was using a hedge trimmer may have made them skittish, but they wouldn’t come near me and of the very few I saw I think the one in the picture was the only one that went to the feeder while I was outside.
I was working in my yard some yesterday and had the cats outside with me. It took a while for me to stop accidentally scaring them away (hummingbirds sound similar to bumblebees, but much louder, so at first when they’d fly over the fence next to me I’d duck and they’d flee at the sudden motion), but eventually they’d stick around briefly. It’s hard to get good pictures with how fast they move, but some of the pictures actually have hummingbirds in them and came out well.
This one blends in very well against the hollyhocks: the hummingbird is just above the top of the arch of the stand for the feeder.
Hummingbirds are quite fearless. If there were two hummingbirds in my yard at the same time they’d ignore both me and the cats to attempt to chase each other off. With only one hummingbird it would always be focused on me, but sometimes would still eat from the feeder. I’m not sure if it was just that I was literally the biggest threat or because the way the cats would go completely motionless was effective, but the cats got surprisingly close to them a couple times (never pounced). A couple times after a bird left Talore looked at me and meowed like she was scolding me for scaring it off before it got closer.
