Songfacts®:

• Hummingbirds are spectacular little creatures, and very elusive. In this song, Leon Russell likens his lady to a hummingbird who comes so sweet and softly. He's hoping she won't fly away, but they invariably do.
  
  He wrote the song about Chris O'Dell, a girl he was seeing at the time. Like Russell, she was in the ambit of The Beatles; she worked at their label, Apple Records, and ended up singing on the "Hey Jude" chorus. In 2010, she published a memoir called Miss O'Dell: Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. Leon Russell had this to say at a 2015 concert: "I met her when she was working at Apple Records. We had a little thing for a minute. She wrote an autobiography, and she sent me an advance copy. I'm sorry to say, as a young man, I was capable of some actions I'm not proud of. So I was afraid to read the advance copy, I gave it to Jackie [his bass player Jackie Wessel] and I said, 'Will you read this and see if there's any untoward activity in it?' He read it and said, 'It's a beautiful little show-business autobiography. There's no untowardness in it.' So I was happy."
• According to Russell, his old flame Rita Coolidge told journalists this song was about her. Russell did write "Delta Lady" for her, but not this one.
• "Hummingbird" was part of Leon Russell's self-titled debut album. By this point, he was well known as a session player, usually on piano. He appeared on many hits of the '60s, including Herb Alpert's "A Taste of Honey" and Bob Lind's "Elusive Butterfly."
• B.B. King covered this song for his 1970 album Indianola Mississippi Seeds with Russell on piano. According to Russell, they had a lot of fun at the session. B.B. King would tell stories while punctuating his sentences with guitar licks; Russell responded by doing the same thing on piano. They ended up having a very musical conversation.
  
  King's version was a hit, going to #48 in the US.