Hummingbirds.

Hummingbirds have been around for a long time, perhaps as long as 22 million years in their present form. They are clearly very small birds, but have characteristics that make them seem more like bees. I wondered if bees and hummingbirds compete for the same nectar sources but it turns out they do not, mostly due to the fact that their visual systems are optimized around different wavelengths of light, hence different flowering plants.

The hummingbird beats its wings 50 times a second, heart racing at one thousand beats per minute, requiring this little dynamo to convert nearly 100% of the food it eats to energy. At night they slow into a quiescent state, almost like hibernation. You would think that these frenzied actions would lead them to have short, albeit exciting, lives. Yet they seem to live 10-20 years – somewhere between the mayfly and Methuselah.

I grew up on a tract of land owned by the US Forest Service, where Pop worked whilst his kids roamed the woods and fields of Maryland. Today Washington and Baltimore have expanded north and south respectively to create an enormous metroplex, but back then Laurel Maryland was still considered small town rural America.

It was there on one late summer afternoon that I was to encounter my first hummingbird. I was headed out back on a very important acorn gathering mission when I spotted a splash of red on the screening of the door. A ruby-throated hummingbird had flown into the screen and gotten itself stuck, it’s beak firmly embedded in the mesh like a spear in amber. I thought, “here is something you don’t see every day”, and if it were to happen today the images would go viral on the internet tubez. But these are ancient times so I went inside to get the butterfly net.  Yes, we had butterfly nets; we were not complete, twitter-less savages.

I carefully pulled the little dude free and held him in the netting, amazed at how light and fragile he was; like air with wings. I knew this bird could not be kept like a pet, as they are creatures destined to be wild and free; not stuck in a cage or on a screen. After showing off my find and gaining valuable street cred with my brothers, I opened the net and watched him zoom off, none the worse for wear.

Once is a while we are part of a moment that stays with us over the years. Push and pull, give and take – the coin of our realm out here in the great world.