by winston » Sun Sep 26, 2010 7:39 am
An Incandescent Drop of American Fire by Alexander Green
A few months ago, my family and I moved into a new home near Charlottesville and a friend gave us the best housewarming gift ever: a hummingbird feeder.
It doesn't require much, just a place to hang it and a simple solution consisting of one cup of sugar to four cups of water. But the return on investment is large.
Hummingbirds are a joy to watch. They are also opportunistic feeders. Once they discover what's on offer, they are there all the time, a continual source of enchantment.
With an ordinary feeder you may get bored with the same birds day after day - or grow tired of the Cold War with the local squirrel population. But hummingbirds never cease to delight.
These are not just the world's smallest birds. They are the smallest warm-blooded creatures on the planet. The largest species, the Giant Hummingbird, weighs seven-tenths of an ounce, the smallest, the Cuban Bee Hummingbird, just seven-hundredths.
They are marvels of miniaturization. Hummingbird nests are the size of half a walnut shell. A penny will almost cover the inside diameter. The two eggs in a typical clutch are the size of tic tacs.
And there is a good reason these birds spend so much time at my feeder. They have the highest metabolic rate of any creature on earth. Hummingbirds live their lives on the brink of starvation. They are able to store only enough energy to survive overnight.
Consider ... a hummingbird flaps its wings up to 200 times a second. It takes up to 300 breaths a minute. Its resting heart rate is 600 beats a minute. And when a hummer flies, its heart may beat twice that fast.
Since they burn calories so furiously, hummingbirds must constantly refuel, often consuming more than twice their weight in small insects and nectar each day. A hungry hummer may visit more than 2,000 flowers between dawn and dusk. (This constant search is why it doesn't take them long to discover a new feeder.)
Researcher Crawford Greenewalt calculates that if a man used energy at a hummingbird's rate, he would need to eat forty ten-pound sacks of potatoes or more than a thousand quarter-pounders a day. Remember that the next time some suggests you "eat like a bird."
Hummingbirds are fliers par excellence, moving at up to 35 mph and diving at nearly 60 mph. They can hover precisely for long periods of time, balancing perfectly, as if floating. No other bird can fly backwards.
You'd imagine that a creature that weighs a fraction of an ounce, has a tiny beak and dines on nectar is a softie. Not so. Hummingbirds are highly territorial, protecting their food supply with ferocity. I witness aerial dogfights in my backyard every day. Hummers won't hesitate to dive bomb other birds, butterflies - even unsuspecting humans - who wander too close to the feeder.
And the little buggers are fearless. They will buzz down for a sugar-water fix even if I'm eating lunch four feet away. If I don't see them or hear their distinctive high-pitched chirp, I know they've arrived when those buzzing wings make a sound like The Bumblebee From Hell has suddenly appeared behind my back.
With the days growing shorter, the hummingbirds will soon be off. By late October, they begin a nearly 2,000-mile migration to Central America. That includes a 500-mile marathon over the Gulf of Mexico, an 18-hour ordeal across open water, with no place to stop and nowhere to feed until landfall.
Hummingbirds are only found in North and South America and a few islands of the Caribbean. If you live east of the Mississippi, the ones you see outside are all ruby-throated. (Only the males have the characteristic red marking.) But you'll find several other species - of the nearly 350 known to exist - in the western United States.
On a trip to Telluride a few summers ago, a friend invited me over to his house one afternoon. Just beyond his back patio, he had strung a long line of hummingbird feeders. A cloud of multi-colored hummers swarmed around us, glittering in the sun. It was like entering Wonderland. I could hardly pay attention to the conversation.
Of course, hummingbirds have captivated men and women for hundreds of years. A Mayan legend says the hummingbird is actually the sun in disguise, here to court the moon. The Aztecs believed that every hummingbird was the spirit of a fallen warrior. And when early Spanish explorers encountered them, they called them joyas voladoras, flying jewels.
Hummingbirds have often captured the imagination of poets, too. In Ode to the Hummingbird, Pablo Neruda rhapsodizes about a "flying spark of water, incandescent drop of American fire, flaming resume of the jungle, rainbow of celestial precision ... a golden thread, a green bonfire ... small, superlative being, you are a miracle, and you blaze."
What's so great about hummingbirds, really? It depends on who's looking, I suppose.
To me, hummingbirds are magic in the air. I admire their energy and intensity, their vitality. There's something irresistible about these tiny creatures, speeding back and forth and then suddenly pulling up in mid-air, shining like an emerald.
Hummingbirds are one of Nature's most eye-catching creations, testimony that the universe is more mysterious and sublime than it needs to be.
They are also a small reminder that life is rich, the most beautiful and exotic things can't be owned - and that it's pretty darn great to be alive.
Source: Spiritual Wealth
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"