Red-Flowering Currant

Day 179: To every thing there is a purpose. While I don't consider the fruits of our native Red-Flowering Currant (Ribes sanguineum) a "table" crop, the plants bring a harvest of a different sort, and one which is both enjoyable in an aesthetic sense and beneficial to the garden as a whole. I speak not of berries, but of the hummingbirds who come to visit. I've never seen anything but Rufous here, although Anna's is fairly common at only slightly lower elevations, but Rufous I have in abundance, and you can't go out in the yard without hearing them cursing at each other. It's not a sound you'd expect from such tiny beings, not a dainty peep or a musical tweeted note but a short, sharp bark of sorts or, alternately, a buzz like a wood-rasp being drawn in short strokes: "tzzzup-tzzzup-tzzzup." Even when food sources are abundant, the hummers swear like sailors at their compatriots, unable to speak a sentence which does not include at least one avian f-word, vulgar little things.