Hummingbird Impatience

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A much more obliging photographer's model

I pressed more tightly against the side of the house hoping to appear invisible to incoming hummingbirds. Wearing a green sweatshirt and shorts as my camouflage— perhaps I would look like a tree, albeit a tree with glasses holding a camera—I was nestled into a small patch of shade. I held my camera steady, not quite at eye level and heard the unmistakable sound of tiny motor droning overhead. I caught the shadow of the hummingbird on the deck in front of me and just as I lifted my camera, the shadow darted away. This was going to be more difficult than I anticipated.

We had become enamored with hummingbirds since observing them enjoying sugar water from a friend’s hummingbird feeder. So enamored in fact, that the next day I ordered one myself and as soon as it arrived suctioned it to the window, filled it homemade nectar and sat down to await the arrival of flocks of hummingbirds.

I waited. Nothing. My husband and I waited together. Nothing.

“Maybe they will feed in the morning,” my husband offered hopefully.

That night he read late into the night, googling all he could find on the Internet about hummingbirds. The red of the feeder would attract them. They migrated from New England to points south anywhere from July to September. They needed to put on weight before starting their long flight and our feeder wouldn’t delay beginning their journey.
When I awoke, the first words I heard were, “maybe they have already migrated.”
All that day we watched out the window, hoping one straggler would still venture by our feeder. Just when our vigilance was beginning to wane we heard a loud buzzing overhead and watched in awe as a hummingbird first hovered above, then set down upon our feeder and dipped in his beak for a long drink of homemade nectar.

I was hooked and instantly sought to catch the hummingbird in a photograph. The first few shots through the window were easy to take, but sadly, the dirt encrusted on my windowpane was far more visible than the tiny bird hovering through the glass. I tried different times of day with the sun at different angles, but none captured the whimsy of the hummingbird.

Thus I began sitting outside, near the feeder, as even with a zoom lens the tiny stature of the bird required me to be quite close if I had any chance of it filling my camera frame. Not surprisingly the hummingbirds were keenly aware of my presence every time I so much as twitched.

 I watched as the sunlight slowly started sliding towards my shady territory. Soon my foot was bathed in sun and the light and warmth continued to spread up my leg and my torso, until I wished I had chosen something other than a heavy sweatshirt as camouflage. I felt large beads of sweat form on my back, yet still I waited quietly for the return of my petite funny friend. Whenever I heard the loud drone above, I froze in place, hardly breathing. The hummingbird would alight on the feeder and just as I raised my camera, would zoom away as quickly as it had arrived.

I tried holding my camera in place, but between its heft and the heat of the sun I soon grew impatient and set it down in my lap. As if the hummingbird knew I was no longer at the ready, he darted in for a quick sip and darted away in the time it took me to lift my camera to eye level. After what felt like an hour sweating in the sun, but was likely no more than 15 minutes, I decided to create a photo memory. The next time the hummingbird came by, I didn’t move a muscle, just studied his feathers and beak and his red collar and created my own mental image of my tiny, feathered friend.

Garden Issues

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The weeds in my garden have roots in New England that rival the descendants of the Mayflower. My lavender sends shoots up everywhere including right in the middle of my miniature rose plant which is about the size of a softball (decidedly not a bush). My coneflower is, literally, one foot tall. Just when the phlox bloom in their glorious bright pink, their shaky stems decide it’s just too much and they collapse onto the walkway or rest upon the browning yarrow, that I am sure I just deadheaded yesterday.

My garden will clearly never be on a garden tour; it continually confounds me. Yet I love it. Each year in July I tell myself that I really should just uproot the lupine—their brown, crinkly leaves and dried tubular stalks are unappealing, and the phlox behind which I attempted to hide them were taken down by a white powdery fungus. Yet I let the lupine thrive, and the following May as I watch their perfect star shaped leaves hold drops of water after the rain, and their flowers turn from green to pink, top to bottom, I wonder how I could have harbored such destructive thoughts. Then the aphids show up and although I reconsider, I let the lupine alone. Or my Rudbeckia flowers in profusion and within days needs to be deadheaded, leaving its hairy brown stems behind.

Last summer I nurtured my stunted plants along and was rewarded with buds ready to burst into cascades of color. Each morning as I excitedly approached my garden, not a speck of color could be seen. Every bud about to burst had been chomped off by a voracious deer. Then this summer, knock on wood, my buds have all been left alone to unfold into brilliant color. Did the deer take an alternate route? Did it find better grazing grounds where it didn’t have to reach down quite so far to nab a tasty bud?

I would continue to expound about the frustrations and gifts from my garden, but a giant foxtail is creeping in the window and tapping on my shoulder.

I am the Anti-Snow White

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I am the anti-Snow White. Just like Snow White, woodland creatures come streaming from their forest homes to greet me. But instead of cheerfully offering their assistance in my daily chores, they come at me with a vengeance.

Maybe Snow White wasn’t waited on by pairs of nesting loons, but had she been lakeside I am certain the loons would have dove into the cool depths of the crystal clear waters to bring her lake reeds to dry and bundle into brooms. No such luck with my loon friends. While I admit I do love the loons, I wonder if they ever sleep. Instead of plying me with lake reeds to dry and fresh fish for dinner, my local loons start off my day with an alarm-clock awakening. Yes, even the ‘hauntingly beautiful’ call of the loon sounds more like a fire alarm when it’s piercing cry hits a high note at 4:30 am waking me from well, at least not Snow White-like sleep. And so my day of reckoning with the innocent-looking woodland creatures begins.

My first morning stop is my garden to see which dainty buds have been torn off my plants by the night’s marauding bunnies and deer. How do they know exactly which day the buds will bloom and rip them (only Snow White would refer to deer and rabbit’s incessant foraging as nibbling) from their stalks just before they open their colorful display? And it’s not just night visits any longer—my two little Bambis wait surreptitiously under cover of brush until I depart before raiding my garden in the middle of the day. Just yesterday I returned to spot the two fleet of foot thieves fleeing down my driveway and scattering into the woods across the street.

All of my woodland sparring partners are bold. I used to keep a tomato plant on my deck. But even with constant vigilance, my adversarial neighborhood chipmunk would scurry right up to the plant and pluck off a cherry tomato just before it was ready to ripen, or simply chomp into the sweet flesh and dart away.

Instead of sweetly singing with me and offering a helping paw or wing as I sweep up, I swear the chipmunks and birds are intentionally dropping their refuse just after my broom has passed. I keep my garbage can lid tightly affixed to repel the raccoons intent on flinging my garbage rather than offering their paws to shine apples, poisonous or not, for my fruit bowl.

No birds flit through my windows to turn back my sheets before I climb into bed. No bunnies snuggle on my covers to warm my feet. And the squirrels, rather than keep a lookout for a wicked witch, have chosen to take up residence in my crawl space and chew through all manner of important conduits in my walls. And so I settle down to sleep, one pillow over my head to keep out the sound of creatures chomping through my garden, and wait for the cry of the loon to startle me awake to another day.