A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Banter Hall The Poet, Writer and Artist's Corner A Day in the Life of a Hummingbird

This was a 500 word short story I wrote as an exercise. The idea was to write from the perspective of an animal.

I awake at the first sign of daylight. I am starving, time to go look for some food. I dart out of my nest and hover for a moment deciding where to go first. I fly to where my nearest food source is, a human’s house, where they always have fresh food for me. I like humans. They always have plenty of food for me. The first time I discovered a human’s place, I was flying among some houses when something red caught my eye. I stopped and hovered for a moment. I flew over to get a closer look and I discovered little red flowers that were emanating a sweet smell of nectar. I flew closer and inserted my beak into the center of the flower, where the sweet smell was coming from. Although the flowers were much harder than what I had been used to drinking from, the taste of the nectar was beyond delicious. I drank my fill and ever since that day I’ve always kept my eyes out for those bright and shining red flowers.
One day I went to one of my favorite human spots and to my horror, another bird was feeding from my flowers. I quickly flew over to fight him off, we don’t like to share our feeding places and it was my intention to let him know that this spot was off limits. After fighting him off, I took my drink and then landed in a nearby tree to keep watch for a few minutes, making sure he didn’t return. Satisfied he wasn’t coming back I ventured off to visit my other favorite feeding spots. This is my daily routine. I fly, eat, rest, and fly again. Flying makes me hungry so I must feed frequently. I do not sit in one spot for very long, in case one of my predators should spot me. Even if they do happen to spot me, I am too fast for them to catch me. I travel many miles in one day, and usually get into at least one fight along the way.
On my way back to my nest, I stop at my favorite spot for one last drink before bed, and to make sure the intruder was still nowhere to be found. The food is almost gone, this upsets me greatly because I depend on this spot and usually visit at least twice a day. Luckily for me the human is standing nearby so I fly over to the human and give him a piece of my mind. I hover in front of him and chirp at him, then fly down to where the food is stored, then back to the human. I do this twice so that the human understands what I’m trying to communicate. This has worked for me in the past when the food had gone bad. That task being accomplished, I fly back to my nest to rest for the evening. Tomorrow I’ll do all over again.

Very nice, Cheryl. Is to be submitted somewhere? I know you were writing for something which I can't remember right now.

It was submitted on an online writing site, I didn't win anything but I did get a couple of good reviews on it. Like I said, it was more of an exercise, but a fun one.

I was writing a novel for NaNoWriMo (national november writing month) and didn't quite finish. I decided I didn't like the way I set that up so I'm working on re-working it. I have no idea how long it will take to finish because I'm barely working on it all at the moment and I really have to be in the right mindset to work on that. I think maybe I'll work on some more short stories for the time being until I get my brain back to where it needs to be for the novel.

I love that you wrote this from a Hummingbird,, well written My Friend!