The Hummingbirds Are Here

 

Hummingbirds hover, particularly around red flowers. Just yesterday our neighbor alerted us to be on the look-out for hummingbirds. She thought she had spotted one. 

  

Our neighbor goes to great trouble to attract hummingbirds every summer. She has an old-fashioned English-flower-garden-style yard with a bounty of blossoms of many kinds. Some planted specifically to appeal to this little bird. Her goal, she says, is to get them to arrive earlier than mid-July. But in good years, when they do come, it always is about this time.

We do not make an effort to attract any specific type of birds, humming or otherwise. We have hung a few flowering baskets, some of which have red flowers. Truth be told, we picked the baskets based on the shade and sun conditions in the yard and price. Not for the aesthetic sensibilities of particular bird species. 

We also have a bird bath we keep filled with clean water. For the most part, filling the bird bath every day is as much an excuse to take our dog outside and let him play in the hose as it is to attract birds of any type. Water play in the yard is one of the few things our old dog still thoroughly enjoys, despite his trouble navigating the steps to the yard. 

 Today, while we were eating breakfast we spotted the hummingbird. Hummingbirds are about the size of locusts. I can’t tell male and female hummingbirds apart. But I’m calling our visiting hummingbird “she.”

She flitted and hovered around a hanging red geranium basket, nowhere near the bird bath. Then she buzzed over the large begonia, awash with bright red blossoms. She also popped in and out of some multi-colored petunia baskets. Then she was off.

While I suspect Ms. Hummingbird has a timetable and agenda all her own, no doubt we have profited from our neighbor’s floral devotion to the hummingbird.  I do hope she made a stop in my neighbor’s yard. Maybe next year we also will make sure we have some hanging baskets with red flowers.

Breakfast with a Cardinal

Our yard is small.  But the view this time of year is beyond belief.  As if it were a giant bouquet, pink fluff envelops the weeping cherry tree just outside my kitchen window.   A short distance beyond the cherry tree the fence is a riot of golden forsythia.  Springtime parades in the Ohio River Valley with flowers, shrubs and trees in dazzling colors and scents, some sweet, some stinky.  But all a welcome relief from the dreariness of winter. 

By the meteorological calendar it is not yet the beginning of spring.  But the term spring hardly does justice to what is happening.  That season also is denoted for the religious holidays, Holy Week or Passover to name two.  I like to think of it as the week  daffodils are in bloom and a few tulips brave the evening dips in temperature to begin their opening dance.   The pear, tulip and cherry trees are in serious bloom. The redbuds hinting at the purple splendor soon to come.

As I sit at my kitchen table eating my regular oatmeal and fruit breakfast unexpectedly I am joined by a Cardinal.  Not the kind wearing an ornate red hat and officiating at church ceremonies.  Or even the kind wearing a team jersey and carrying sports paraphernalia.  No, this is the bird from which all the others take their inspiration. 

The Cardinal perches atop the recently-trimmed junipers nestled beneath my bay windows.  As I eat I watch him snack leisurely at the shrub insects, stirred, no doubt, by the trimming.  He is bright red and smallish.  Certainly smaller than the robins who splash in the birdbath, but larger than the finches who delicately sip a drink.  The Cardinal is less than five feet from where I sit, separated from me by a window.  He occasionally hops forward on the bush, watching me as I eat.  I wonder what thoughts go through his head on this glorious morning. 

Hawaiian Cardinal