Sitting on the deck at 7AM drinking coffee, the hummingbirds are teaching me about nature. The sun hasn't made it over the hill top and the still air is cool on my bare arms at first until my body warms the unstirred layer of air coating my skin.
There are hummingbird feeders three feet above me on either side. A hummer hovers a few feet to my right with a mixture of caution and curiosity. I feel a cool wind on my right arm from the air stirred by its tiny wings. It leaves and in 10 seconds my blood flow has re-warmed that layer of air.
Now a furious territorial disagreement between two hummers on the feeder to my left brings another wave of cool air as one swoops close to my arm. Again my body heat warms the air along my skin when that tiny gust of wind passes.
If that little bundle of avian energy, about the weight of a penny, can stir my environment imagine the impact each of us has in our daily activity. Every step I take through the field can change the life of grass and weeds as well as the aphids sipping from their leaves. The ants that are collecting honeydew from the aphids to feed their young are frantic, moving their eggs and pupae away from the path of destruction created by my boot.
All of these are occurring constantly, whether by the nose of my curious dog or the plodding step of a bear in the woods, a fact of life on our complex planet. This destruction is at the far end of the spectrum of daily destruction and rebirth that we call life.
Now I drive by a new house site on the wooded hillside where a bulldozer has cleared the trees to prepare for the laying of 10 acres of sodded lawn. This will soon be patrolled weekly by a lawn mower, producing the wind of a million hummingbirds. Its all relative.
I
never tire of watching the hummingbirds come and go, for the most part
oblivious to my presence. Occasionally I catch a glimpse of one's tongue
extended as it backs off. My mother would have said it is "licking its
chops." At other times as it hovers away from the feeder I can see a quick stream of urine, embarrassing perhaps but necessary when it is living on a liquid diet.Now in nesting season I will occasionally see a female clutching a wad of spider silk in her claws as she sips at the feeder. These strong threads will bind her nest together and anchor it to the foundation. Soon hummers will be rare at the feeder for a while as they concentrate on catching insects for the high protein diet their young require. I don't worry as they will return in swarms like in this video by August.
