A hummingbird was checking out a female Mississippi kite after the rain last Monday evening. Well, pestering and trying to intimidate looked more like it. I chuckled. The hummingbird finally settled on a not-to-near bare branch tip and kept an eye on the kite as the kite preened and dried out a little bit while waiting for the cicadas to emerge from hiding.
It was remarkably quiet out, actually. Quite nice. We’ve been getting about one good to decent rain a week, more or less, for a few weeks now. It’s not the average pattern for August, but rain is rain, and this part of the world almost always wants more. This rain came with a very strong cold front that dropped the temps into the low 60s as well as bucketing down rain. Low clouds hugged the tops of the trees. In other words, good weather for a natural redhead who wanted to take a walk before sunset.
As I returned from my stroll, I saw the hawk first. She was hard to miss, perched on the tip of a bare branch on the top of one of the tallest trees on the block, black against the slivery-grey sky like a bird-book illustration. The kites like this branch, so she wasn’t a surprise. I stopped, waiting for a car to creep through the intersection, and saw a dot of motion. The dot stopped and hung in mid-air, then backed away at the same elevation, advanced again, and darted around to the other side of the kite. She started working on one wing. The dot returned to its earlier spot in the middle of the air, then settled onto a lower branch tip.
The dot, a hummingbird, lifted off two or three more times as I watched, then settled in to stare at the kite, or do whatever he was doing. I smiled, laughed a little at the show, and finished my walk.
Cat Rotator's Quarterly 
“Come at me, Bro!”
Fortunately, she didn’t notice. 😉
Hummingbirds are the helicopters of the bird world. They can hover and fly backwards. Also, they are one of the more pugnacious of birds. In an aerial contest the kite might well be outclassed.
Two years ago, a male hummingbird kept everything else off the birdbath and out of the back yard for almost an hour. Even the bluejays fled.
Talk about David and Goliath…LOL
Not the size of the dog in the fight …
Hummers are truly feisty li’l things. I once saw a hummingbird chasing a great blue heron.
Tough little guy. “Get in my bath, an’ I cut you!!” kind of crazy. Finches gang up and do that also.