Eye to Eye with a Humingbird

     Today while I was doing some gardening (it's my one marketable skill apparently, besides babysitting) I had a close encounter of the winged kind. I was standing up to ease a few of the cramps out of my back, when a brilliant green humming bird flitted in to assess the caliber of my work. He hovered for a few seconds right in front of my face, so close that I could see his tiny black eyes, before zooming off again into the increasingly cloudy sky.

     It was like he was saying hello. He kind of tilted his little head to one side as if to say "Well, you and I don't look a like at all!" right before he whisked himself away. Hummingbirds are one of my favorite members of the avian clan, because they look so deceptively airy. A hummingbird in flight seems to suggest a tiny, iridescent fairy, a sudden gust of flower petals on a sprightly wind. A capricious glint of sunlight on moving water. Of course, they do have the slender hollow bones of all birds, but even above that they are especially minuscule, a fact which allows them to fly in a manner so insect-like.  The american humming bird, while tiny, is actually the largest of hummingbirds that grace the planet. Some of their southern cousins are so diminutive that at first glance they are often mistaken for flying bugs.

     But a hummingbird once landed on my finger as it dipped its beak to drink at a nectar feeder, and rather than feeling like a tiny puff of inconsequential air, it feel very solid and strangely heavy.  Its feet were strong, like wires pinching around my index finger, and it's body, with held from motion, seemed to condense. I was very aware of its presence on my hand, and equally aware when it departed, with a swift kick and lift that left indents in my skin. So, I remember thinking to myself, you are not quite so delicate as you appear.

     Hummingbirds are survivors. But the same could be said of everything in nature. Survival is the common thread between everything tiny, and everything mammoth. The smallest insect, the largest mammal, in each case their size provides them with some advantage that allows them to persist.  Even humans, with our height just generous enough to allow us to see over the tall grasses of the African savanna, our earliest neighborhood, are not exempt.  It's comforting to think that we are all exactly the size and shape that we are meant to be.