Female Hummingbird and Today's "Fly into Window" Drama

This is a photograph of a female hummingbird from last year. I isolated it as one of my favorites but never got around to using it any posts. I especially love the shape of her belly and her facial expression. My tomato cages used to be stationed under one of the feeders so the hummingbirds would use it for a perch.

I went to last year's photos because I wanted a happy, sunny, beautiful picture of one of my female birds because I had such an emotional scare today when thud! someone flew right into my recently cleaned sliding patio door. When I looked outside I saw this tiny female hummingbird mangled, laying on her side on the concrete. Her beak looked fine but I worried her neck was broken. Initially her wings twitched rather involuntarily, like she was having a seizure. It was very upsetting. She was clearly still alive. I have her 5 minutes to calm down before stepping out. She seemed to be breathing frantically so I waited for her to settle down before propping her up off her side and onto her feet/belly, which seemed more stable. She assisted to make it work and managed to hold her head upright, confirming to me that her neck was not broken. I tried to feed her some nectar from a hand-feeder by gently putting it up to her beak and poking it in. She wasn't interested. I surrounded her with shady plants and went back inside to let her settle down.

After about 30 minutes and some internet research I went back outside to attempt to feed her again, as I read that it was important to make sure she didn't starve (they need to eat/drink very frequently). Since her neck seemed fine I figured she was either concussed or perhaps had broken her wing. I slowly sat down next to her on the patio floor. She shuddered and when I reached toward her she suddenly elevated and after pausing in the air for a moment buzzed right off.

I WAS SO RELIEVED! I seriously thought she might suffer a horrible, drawn out death. I won't lie, I cried. And although I had many, many opportunities to get pictures of the immobilized bird it felt like it would be disrespectful or predatory to do so... I don't want to see any bird in that state, ever. But that is why I'm using a picture from last year to go with this post.

I'm so glad she's back to flying. There's something so heart-breaking about a broken bird.

Needless to say, I also need to quickly invest in something that will make my patio door more visible to the birds. I don't want this happening again. I've been keeping a few stained glass light catchers on the glass, but that doesn't seem to be enough. Any suggestions are welcomed:)

As always, all content is original and my own. I take all my pictures with my snazzy Cannon PowerShot SX410 IS. If you want to see more of it consider upvoting and following me.