I found it on the blue-porch floor when I went around this morning to admire the previous day's cleaning and re-arranging.  I guess it had flown in the previous day, attracted by the things in the red porch, and couldn't find its way out. And now was exhausted.

 

I took it out, beyond the gate so the cats wouldn't find it, and dripped sugar-water on its peak. When I went back into the house, trying to find some kind of nozzle it could drink from, it disappeared.  I thought perhaps it had got some of the sugar energy and flown away.  Not so - a bit later I found it a few yards away, dead. Used its last bit of life to get away from its torturer.

 

I didn't take the time to get a photo while it was alive, and didn't want to do it in death.  Didn't coo in its poor little ear either.  (Where are hummingbird ears anyway?)

 

There was another death day before yesterday.  My handyman asked if I knew we had a predator in the area.  Maybe a coyote or a fisher.  He said when he was rooting around in the metal behind the shed he'd found a dead rabbit. 

 

But a little while later he reported that my big ginger cat had casually scaled the new fence and headed straight for the rabbit.  He figured the cat was the culprit, returning to the scene of the crime for another nosh.  And here I'd been worried for him, being the only cat that gets out of the yard, and all my previous cats who managed that sooner or later got eaten.

 

Poor bunny.  I didn't coo in its dead ears either...tho it had very long, conspicuous ones.  No pictures of it either.

 

I buried the hummingbird a few minutes ago.  My handyman took the rabbit home, because his dog had become fixated on it, watching the cat eat, and then moving in. My handyman is soft-hearted, but practical.  One of his dogs had disturbed a wild turkey at his place, and the bird abandoned its nest.  So he took the eggs home and ate them.  When one of his many dogs gets the fatal verdict from the vet, he doesn't pay the $75 for euthanasia - he takes the dog home, shoots it, buries it....and then cries.

 

He probably doesn't coo into their ears either.