“Hummingbird” was written by the English singer-songwriter Boo Hewerdine, a longtime collaborator of the singer Eddi Reader. Reader performed it with Hewerdine, and a recording appeared through the Transatlantic Sessions, the gathering of Celtic and American roots musicians, in the late 1990s.
The song takes the hummingbird as its central image — a small, restless, bright creature — and uses it to speak of fragility, of motion, and of a love or a life that cannot easily be held still.
The banjo player Alison Brown, who works across bluegrass and beyond, recorded the song. The version heard here is by Alison Brown.
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