Sunbirds

There is a proliferation of sunbirds in the garden at the moment, with four of them flitting from flower to flower and shrub to shrub with such gay abandon that even the cats seem to have given up trying to catch them. Their joyous song starts before sunrise and continues until sundown and there is seemingly no end to their enjoyment of life.
I have been trying to take photos of their brilliant iridescence and spend hours rushing from front deck to back deck, identifying their situation by the twittering, but they are just too fast, and even when feeding on sweet nectar they barely stay still for five seconds. It's a great exercise in patience and perseverance!
This morning, as I bent down to photograph a flower, the familiar shouting came from a metre away on the other side of the railing. Of course the camera setting was wrong, but I snapped away and managed to get a few okay shots.

I like to think that one of the sunbirds is this little chap that I rescued twice in a week from the clutches of the cat last year!