When we moved up to Blandford, so many years ago, the last thing that I had expected to find each summer were hummingbirds to come visit in my backyard. Growing up in Astoria, I had read about them; learning about their tiny size, their ability to hover, their perpetual need to feed their little fuel machines and to think that by moving up to a tiny town in the Berkshires, I would get to see their wild dance, flitting from bee balm to bee balm, right in my back yard. My neighbors have reported sightings already, my neighbor from across the street set up her hummingbird feeder May 5th and she said that just the other day, she almost got binged in the head by a determined hummingbird, she then told me that the man across the road on Wyman Lane was weed whacking with his mouth open (she didn’t explain why his mouth was open) and a hummingbird impaled his tongue with its beak. The poor bird paid for his aggressive flight plan with his life but I have seen how fast and furious they can fly, my best friend used to duck every time she went to replenish her feeder because they were lying in wait.
I’m waiting for my bee balm, corn flowers and thistle to bloom for the little hummingbirds to come visit me in my back yard. Over the past few years, I have had this female who is so aggressive and territorial, I’m not sure if she is the same one who comes back, I tend to think that she is the same one, because I have never seen other little hummingbirds be as aggressive. She will sit in my pussy willow tree surveying her garden full of her flowers and mercy on the unsuspecting hummingbird or butterfly who tries to tread on her territory. She is like a jet fighter plane zooming in on her enemy. She drives them away and practically beats them up in the process. Once I got the tremendous luck of seeing a baby hummingbird, it was as big as a bumble bee, it was such a gift from mother nature.
Normally, I don’t get very excited by birds but there is something magical about hummingbirds. I read somewhere that it was the hummingbird that inspired Leonardo da Vinci to draw his plans for the helicopter. I see the sense of it.
laurieanichols 