Look, a hummingbird!
At the edge of the cloud forest in Ecuador, a hummingbird zoomed out of the misty mountains and landed on the tip of my finger. It was about 4 inches long, with a green, iridescent back, and dark green spots on its white belly. It thrust its beak into the red plastic feeder I held in my palm. After it drank its share of sugar water, it looked at me and then zipped through the fog into the trees.
I had come to Ecuador on a 10-day trip led by an ethnobotanist (someone who studies the relationships between different cultures and native plants). I had taken a workshop with her at a conference in New Hampshire, and the effusive love she offered to all beings 鈥� legged, rooted, or winged 鈥� inspired and empowered me.
When I learned about this trip, I was a divorced mom who had spent 16 years raising my four kids. My passport had expired years before. My mind introduced its concerns, but my heart had already booked the flight. A few months later, I found myself standing at a railing in light rain, surrounded by a rainbow of hummingbirds: the booted rackettail with its long oar-like tail and furry white leggings, the graceful white-necked jacobin with an iridescent blue head, and the green mountain velvetbreast who stood on my finger. They flew backward, forward, and hovered in midair beside the hanging feeders, their wings flapping in a figure-eight pattern so fast they blurred.
Why We Wrote This
A common love of hummingbirds nurtures a special bond between the writer and her grandmother.
Watching these itinerant jewels, I thought of my grandmother, who kept a hummingbird feeder outside the wide window in her living room, where she loved to preside over a lively conversation with family and friends. Every time a hummingbird arrived at the feeder she would silence the room. 鈥淟ook! A hummingbird!鈥� she would say. We would gaze in silence until the hummingbird zipped away.
My grandmother鈥檚 home in upstate New York was a migratory destination for the ruby-throated hummingbirds, the only species that breeds east of the Mississippi River in North America. Ecuador, the most biodiverse land for its size, is home to 137 species of hummingbirds 鈥� a mosaic of colors, shapes, and sizes.
What an amazing thing, I thought, to experience the abundant energy of hummingbirds in Ecuador, while my grandmother was still with us. I felt grateful to share this world with her at that moment.
Shortly after my grandmother passed, I visited my parents at their house on the lake where my grandparents had spent summers sleeping on a boat. The bushes shook with hummingbirds. I helped my mother clean the hanging feeders, because fungus growth in feeders is cited as one reason the delicate birds鈥� population is waning. Flower nectar is better food than sugar water, and since they have learned to rely on the feeders, I encouraged my mother to gradually transition to flowers to power their migrations.
In December that year, several months after the ruby-throated hummingbirds had completed their winter migrations to Mexico, I received a box in the mail. The return address was my grandmother鈥檚. Inside I found a glass ornament in the shape of a hummingbird with a note from my mother. She had sorted through my grandmother鈥檚 things and knew she would want me to have this. I placed it on our small Christmas tree alongside the ornaments my grandmother had gifted me as a child.
When the snow thaws in spring, I order organic seeds from a trusted company and start seedlings of Mexican sunflower in pots before transferring them to the raised bed in my backyard. Twice a year, the ruby-throated hummingbirds make the nearly 2,000-mile migration. I plant flowers in the dirt to invite them and nourish them, so they survive the long journeys and enjoy their stay here. This is my small role in hummingbird hospitality.
Amid all the coercive pressures of our lives, the call of the hummingbirds can feel as slight as the sensation of tiny feet on a finger. They will never send us a bill for our attention; we pay it voluntarily, or we miss them. We must listen and look, plant flowers, and clean our feeders 鈥� and, if we鈥檙e fortunate, have someone in our lives who will stop everything to direct our attention to their prismatic, hovering wings, and say, 鈥淟ook! A hummingbird!鈥�
鈥� Amy Asherah
