Our summer visitors -- the hummingbirds -- are busier that ever at the feeders, draining them by early afternoon. I suspect that their first hatchlings are now a-wing, thus the increased demand.
Hummers are noisy, contentious little critters, especially the males who spend at least three-quarters of their energy running others off. It's hard to watch their buzzing, swooping air battles without being reminded of the tie fighters in Star Wars. Were the creators of these highly maneuverable movie space craft inspired by hummingbirds? Tie fighters even make a similar buzzing noise!
When I took these pictures, there were five or six (hard to be sure) hummingbirds fighting for places at the juice bar but I could never manage to capture more that three at once.
I've cherished another theory about humming birds -- wondering if they could have been the inspiration for the multi-winged seraphim described in the Bible and pictured below in this picture by Jan van Eyck. (Stigmatization of St. Francis.)
Alas, a quick visit to Mr. Google told me that hummingbirds are only found in the Americas -- though hummingbird-like fossils from 30 million years ago have been found in the Old World.
So much for my lovely theory.
I did find a nice image of a hummer from the Nazca Desert in Peru...
One lone male hummingbird -- master of all he surveys.
But before he can settle down to enjoy himself -- here comes another hummer and the first guy feels obligated to defend the nectar -- no matter that there are four feeding holes and a lady in the kitchen ready to refill the feeder -- it's a point of honor!
These tiny birds buzz and twitter and perform spectacular aerial maneuvers -- only now and then managing to get a sip of sugar water.
I took these pictures a few days ago and was reminded of them last night when a heated discussion broke out after dinner about Twitter -- yes, the social networking kind. I don't know much about Twitter -- don't tweet and don't follow anyone else's twittering. So I didn't feel capable of weighing in on the subject under discussion -- which, if I followed it, was something like "Email and Twitter and other social networking modes, all of which place a premium on brevity, are rapidly destroying their users' ability to engage in detailed and abstract reasoning."
Or not. Twitter's role in getting the news out of Iran and in enabling dissidents to come together was referenced. Haiku were mentioned too -- an art form in which brevity is like the distillation of ideas. A case was made that many people are communicating now who otherwise would not.
I don't know how the discussion ended. It got too loud for me and I went upstairs to check my email.
What do you think? Is all this communication a good thing? Any down sides? (Of course, the fact that you're here reading this suggests a certain bias in favor of the Internet.)
