Sunday Switchup: Anna’s Hummingbird

I am tickled every time I see one of these, and when I get close enough to one to take pictures I always do. Sometimes they come out all right.

Separately… I know that there are other things to be amazed about, technologically, on the iPhone. But I was kind of ahead of the curve on most of them: in 1998 I had a vaguely portable palmtop (Newton 2100) which could read my handwriting quite well, which had a fully functional web browser, which in short did a surprising number of things that my iPhone can do. Sure it was much bigger, but it was still quite portable if you were the type to carry a backpack, or an admittedly rather large belt holster. But if you’d told me in 1997 that I’d be carrying around a palmtop/phone with a camera that could let you count the feathers in a hummingbird’s wing from a distance of five feet, I would have looked at you funny and walked across the street.

I make it as either 12 or 13 feathers, but there might be an extra couple hiding at the back end.

She didn’t seem at all put out by the foot traffic going right by her lunch.