A gardener shared some incredible footage of their beautiful garden being carefully tended to by a pint-sized pollinator.
The remarkable video posted to r/NativePlantGardening shows a hummingbird getting to work in a bountiful yard chock full of colorful flowers.
"This is Hum-prhey!" the thread's title reads. "He is my little friend in the garden, and is always close by. He is so curious."
Of the 300 types of hummingbird found throughout the Americas, 26 spend at least part of the year in the United States.
They are, in the words of the National Park Service, "amazingly adapted pollinators." They use their long, slim bills and tube-like tongues to suckle nectar from flowers and, in the process, spread pollen from plant to plant.
Because they have such a rapid metabolism, they drink about twice their body weight in nectar each day. They use sight to determine which flowers to visit and are pretty partial to colorful plants.
A blog post by the University of Maryland notes that hummingbirds are clever little fellows with an excellent memory. They can remember which flowers they've visited and will refrain from returning to flowers they've already fed from too soon. That's especially impressive if you take into account the sheer number of flowers they'll attend to in a given day, which can be as many as 3,000.
By rewilding their yard with native plants, the Reddit user created a vibrant habitat for this teeny bird to thrive. It's a true win-win situation for all involved, as an upgraded natural lawn isn't just easy on the eye, it's cheaper and easier to maintain.
The comments were full of enthusiasm for both the garden and the feathered friend.
"Man quite the buffet he has," one mused.
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Not even close 🧑🌾 "This is a beautiful yard, truly!" another enthused.
"What a busy lil guy! He's hit the jackpot," added another user.
"I think your hummingbird is just coming by so close all the time to say thank you for providing it with all of that joy," another wrote.
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