Hummingbird Feet

I promised a post about hummingbird feet, so here it is. I was actually surprised to discover that hummingbirds had feet at all, heretofore believing the myth that they never light. That myth was debunked within an hour of hanging a new beautiful feeder on the deck.

"Hang it and they will come." Right away. Who knew so many hummingbirds were waiting nearby for a pretty red feeder? This one doubles as a garden ornament, brushed copper with shiny red glass globe. A bit pricey, but when I saw it at my local hardware store, I couldn't resist---having wanted a hummingbird feeder but refusing to hang the tacky red & yellow plastic variety. But I digress.

Back to the little black legs and feet that hang like two fine three-pronged wires under the floppy torsos of the tiny bird bodies hovering around the feeder. Tiny they are, but perch they do. All the time. They zoom back and forth between the cherry trees and the feeder, lighting on exposed twigs and occasionally even on the feeder itself. Their legs are no longer than 1/2 inch. The little prongs for feet are like the bent end of a staple, only black. I can't take my eyes off them, wondering at their size.

Of course, the hovering and nectar sipping acrobatics are equally noteworthy, but those I knew to expect. The feet I didn't. I can guess that experienced hummer watchers would be shocked at my ignorance. I also predict this will not be my last post about these remarkable ruby-throated gems. dkm

Tenacity

A phenomenon in the periphery of the back yard catches my eye every fall---more accurately, every late summer. A few leaves of blazing red pigment, beautiful and shocking so early in the season, stand out in a canopy otherwise green. The mornings have only just begun to cool. The afternoons are still hot. Yesterday's mercury reached above ninety degrees. One could not yet call this fall.

Only these few leaves are red in the sea of green. They hang on a single twig at the end of a branch in a tree that stands just across our property line at the edge of the woods. The rest of the leaves on this tree are still mostly green, though some have yellowed. Other trees around the edge of the yard are still fully green. How does it happen that one twig on one branch of one tree allows its leaves to turn suddenly crimson, when the rest of the leaves on same tree gradually turn brown or yellow as they prepare for the single ride of their lives to the ground?

The tree doesn't look healthy, and perhaps that's the answer. It sports several bare branches that never do leaf out. Maybe the deep brown and yellow leaves that fall with each breeze would be equally crimson if their tree were robust. This tree makes a valiant attempt at a new fresh canopy every spring. I've watched it do so for as long as we've lived here, 15 years. I don't know what kind of tree it is, and it doesn't matter. Its few red leaves are my latest model for tenacity when the writing work gets hard. dkm

The Simple Art of Paying Attention

So I realized yesterday, when I went to hear a speaker who, like me, writes a blog on the merits of simplifying and paying slow attention to the ordinary offerings of a day, that a few distinctions separate her from me. She, for instance---by physical demeanor---exudes serenity, talks softly, pauses long, moves barely. I'm pretty sure the people in my life would not describe me that way.

The speaker's words were soothing, inspiring, understated, funny, even outrageous at times. These attributes make for good writing, but it is not a stretch for her to slow down. For me, it is a monumental achievement. I'm only saying that slowing down is not as "simple" for some as it is for others.

True, she's been writing her essays for five years in contrast to my one, but I doubt I will ever pull off serenity as well as she. The irony is that, despite giving lip service to the joy of life, she didn't sound happy. Her monotone public-speaking voice denied inner peace. It almost put me to sleep, and I couldn't help noticing other eyes at half-mast in the auditorium. Perhaps her aura of contentment relaxed us. I'd like to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it felt more depressing than relaxing. I wondered if people of my demeanor vex her soul. She spoke of giving up toxic people. I feared being one of them in her view, but I do enjoy a day and the things it has to offer, including the people in my life. dkm

Apology to a Small Creature

Early this morning, within my peripheral vision, something large, silent, and swift descended into one of the hydrangeas near the deck where I sat contemplating the hummingbirds at the feeder. This is the season in which hummingbirds come by twos, threes, and fours, nattering away at each other. I had intended to write about their tiny hanging feet today, but the Cooper's Hawk in the hydrangea instantly changed my focus.

A noisy rustling skirmish in the leaves under the bush indicated the hawk's success at hunting its breakfast, but then---oh terrible then---it abandoned the prey it had only maimed, spread its powerful wings, and flapped twice to perch on the back of a patio chair facing away from me, not ten yards from where I sat. I know not if it was aware of my presence when it first attacked the hapless creature below, but now it turned its head and looked me in the eye. I hadn't moved except to turn my head toward the skirmish. Was I the reason the hawk so cruelly left that poor creature to an agonizing death? I shuddered at the piteous konk-konk-konk-konking in the throat of the small dying thing, whatever it was. I could see the movement of the leaves, and hear the konks, but could not identify it---could have been a bird or a chipmunk hidden in the dry leaf cover.

After a few seconds of eyeing me from the chair, the young hawk, with horizontally striped tail and white splotchy feathers in its back, flapped to a new perch on the fence, where it stayed for several minutes before offing into the woods with only two flaps and a glide. A few minutes later, it startled me again by flap-flap-gliding past my shoulder, low and close enough for me to hear the whir of its wings against the air, though it did not return to the place of its terrible deed. Again it disappeared into the woods. Had it been stalking me to see if it was safe to return to its breakfast? Is this the same young hawk that has watched me garden?

From under the hedge adjacent to the hydrangea, where the maimed prey was somehow able to take refuge, the konking slowly, gradually, terribly, grew weaker and weaker, until it stopped after about ten minutes.

It is not to my credit that I was too squeamish to assist it to a faster death. I have neither the heart nor the stomach for such a task. But now I must live with the aural memory of those diminishing konks, wondering at my responsibility in this event.

The hummingbird feet will keep until a later post. dkm

Beetle in Shock & Robert Frost

For too many days I've given my backyard over to the heat, the mosquitoes, and a bad mood about not getting to my real work of writing. But this morning the thermometer reads 72 degrees, offering hope. The air is cooler but the mosquitoes are relentless. So much for restoring my mood by sitting outside. I'll be driven in soon, with mosquito-slapping.

Still, the birds sing, the dogs bark, the crickets drone, the squirrels chase, the tiger swallow tails go on intoxicating themselves in the little white tube blossoms of the abelia bushes. A pine cone falls on me from the branch overhead. Whether dropped by a squirrel, or released by its branch, I know not, but it splattered, dry and brittle, on my head and arms. One of the broken pieces landed on the hem of my shirt and didn't fall away like the others. Turns out it's a small brown beetle clinging for its life to the stillness of my shirt, legs and antennae tucked under its hard dry shell, looking for all the world like a piece of pine cone, but not acting like one.

It must have been a terrifying free-fall for a beetle who thought he had found safe refuge in a pine cone far from the madding crowd. When I nudged him with my pencil his antennae and legs popped out as if to say, "What? Am I still alive?" After a moment he crawled away, but not before getting a reading from his wildly waving antennae about his new situation.

Magically, in the time it has taken to write this entry, the mosquitoes have gone away, slow breezes waft, and my bad mood has lifted. It brings to mind yesterday's NYT article about the negative side-effects of constant digital connection, and the energizing effects of a little time spent in nature.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/technology/25brain.html?nl=&emc=aua1

Robert Frost wrote about it too:

Dust of Snow

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of day I had rued.

.

My Ugly Bald Cardinal

Mites: the answer to the question of July 20's post, "What caused my beautiful father cardinal to go bald?"

According to Dr. Zinn, friend and ornithology consultant, head mites are common among cardinals. They can preen the mites from their body feathers, but not from their heads.

Like many phenomena of nature, this one is sad, true, easy enough to understand---and renders a thing of beauty ugly---REALLY ugly.

Knowledge of the presence of head mites prompts other questions and more online research, though I can't vouch for the answers I found on the blogs of other birders: Are the mites harmful to the longterm health of the cardinal? No. Will the mites die off like insects in winter? Yes. Will the cardinal's head feathers grow back? Yes. Will the eggs of the mites left in abandoned nests survive the winter and begin a new generation next spring? Yes.

The particularly frightening, bald, black-headed, mostly-red patriarch of the cardinal nests in and around my backyard, still frequents the feeder over the deck, as do his comical first-year offspring. His mate and children are all varying shades of tan with reddish tails. One tall skinny daughter with disheveled yellowish feathers hops on the deck looking quite shell-shocked. She eats only the debris on the deck floor beneath the feeder, but her more aggressive brothers, equally comedic, vie for direct time and place at the portals of the feeder. Some of them are splotchier than others as they molt to exchange their brown feathers for red. The adolescent males exercise their crest feathers up and down, strutting and prancing, discovering their male prowess, providing us with great summer theater through the window.

One of them, poor baby, is beginning to show signs of mites---that is, losing feathers about his neck and head. It's the cardinal equivalent of male pattern baldness. dkm

The Hawk Next Door

By its size and stubby tail, I know the hawk that accompanies me while I work outside in the cool of the morning is a youngster. Male or female, I don't know, but it has a persistent whistle, which I hear often, even from inside the house, and this morning, from a lower bare dead branch of the dogwood just above my head.

It's a little unnerving to weed with a hawk watching my every move. What does it want? dkm

The Colbert Report

It's been too hot to be outside---but I'm ever aware that the wild creatures who share their space with me can't share my luxury of choice about staying where it's cool. The life that teems out there has not stopped just because I'm not there to observe it.

All it takes to find a topic for a blog-post is to show up. (Wish I could remember to apply the same principle to my more intentional writing endeavors.) This morning, no matter the high heat, I spent a half-hour weeding in Sarah's 21st birthday garden, and sure enough, much presented itself about which to comment---mainly the hawk next door.

At first I wondered if it was one of our abundant bluejays mimicking a hawk's whistle, as I've been fooled many times before. But these whistles seemed too long, too persistent, too loud for a jay. I stopped weeding to look in their direction, in time enough to spot the powerful and majestic silence of a hawk taking flight from the fence between my yard and the neighbor's into the leafy canopy. Had this hawk been watching me weed? I had been aware of its whistle while I worked. It continued from some higher perch unseen, long after I returned to my hoeing.

I half-expected the Colbert Report to begin. dkm

Squirrel vs. Gravity and Safflower

Q: How long can a squirrel hang upside down without righting itself?

A: At least eleven minutes if an uncontested food source is involved.

I know because I timed it, and it would have been longer if another squirrel hadn't chased the first one away. I had cleaned up an old tube-shaped bird feeder that hangs from an arm on a pole in my garden and that I know is not squirrel proof. I refilled it with safflower seeds because the package said squirrels don't like them and finches do. Without dwelling on that bit of false advertising, I find it hugely surprising that a squirrel can hang upside down from a bar for eleven minutes eating ANYthing.

This squirrel's hind feet held tight to the bar while its body stretched long and thin and straight downward. I had an urge to tickle its pure white soft-looking belly. Its head and front feet snatched the seeds from the bottom of the feeder, barely within reach. Its tail flopped loosely around, I assume assisting with balance.

The whole spectacle seemed counter to everything I know about gravity. Wouldn't the pressure of blood draining into the squirrel's head cause it to turn upright once in a while? Wouldn't the downward force of gravity prevent the chewed and swallowed seeds from moving upward through a wrong-turned outstretched esophagus? How long could it have continued its upside down quest if it hadn't been chased away? These are questions whose answers can not be found on the internet. Still, I'm curious. dkm

Window Theater

What would cause a seemingly healthy male cardinal to go bald? At first he looked deformed, misshapen, splotchy red and black about the head, but as more and more crest feathers fell out, I saw that his head was perfectly round like a bird's head should be--and surprisingly black, when featherless. By now, he is frightening to behold, with bare black head above a body fully feathered in red. He never stills long enough for a photo.

The cardinal in question has come to the feeder outside the sliding glass doors since mid-May, almost certainly the patriarch of the nest in the neighbor's holly tree. Through two months of live-acting, he gradually revealed more and more black-skinned head.

First spied mating in the azalea thicket, then in and out of the holly tree, often on the banister feeding his beloved a sunflower seed from the feeder, he has been a model lover and father. Now his adolescent sons and daughters come to the feeder with him, sometimes lined up three at a time on the deck banister, waiting their turn on the feeder perch. The young are smaller and browner and comical looking, the males turning redder and cockier by the day. Only the absence of their father's head and crest feathers makes for a less than perfect family portrayal.

Is it caused by an environmental hazard, or is it genetic? I'm guessing the former. Either way, I half-expected the young to show signs of the same problem, since both their habitat and genetic codes are the same as their father's. So far, the new generation looks healthy. Time will tell.

Mysteries abound when one pays long slow attention. I would have expected more answers, fewer questions. It's been quite the opposite. The only truth revealed is that the more one sees, the more one finds about which to wonder. dkm