This summer has gone by so quickly, and rather uneventfully. I feel like we have missed a lot by not being at the shore on the weekends or for vacation. Andrew and I were married at the shore, so we have a lot of very strong ties to the area, including his family’s summer home. I also have my birds. Every year the vacant lot next to the Hamiltons’ becomes a rookery for Yellow Crowned Night Herons. Every year I photograph their nests, their babies, their first flights and their departure for the winter. I miss them. Lots.
Birdwatching is something that relaxes me. It is an escape. The first time I seriously started to pay attention to birds was the year Andrew and I started dating. When he brought me to his family’s shore house and I saw those herons, I was fascinated and in awe of such prehistoric looking creatures. They just begged to have their pictures taken. And they begged me to find out exactly what they were. I began to do some research and took rolls and rolls of film. Photographing birds soon became my new hobby.
Later that year, Andrew and I moved in together. There was an old plastic birdfeeder in the yard at our apartment. One day I put seed in it. Suddenly, as if I stood on the rooftop and broadcast bird calls of a dozen varieties, all these birds I had never noticed before flooded the yard and fought for turns at the feeder. I wanted to know what kinds of birds these were. It drove me nuts that I could not identify them. So I joined the National Audubon Society, and bought a field book. Amazed at the variety of species living in our area, I made it my goal to attract them all, including hummingbirds. One birdfeeder begat two more. Which in turn begat a LOT of birds.
I started to count them.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a program called “Project Feederwatch” which anyone, anywhere in the United States can join for a small fee. As a participant you are asked to count how many birds of each species visit your yard each day in winter. You record the maximum number of the same species that you observe at any given time during the day. You note the date, the hour and the weather conditions. All these observations are recorded in a little SAT test format booklet where you color the little circles in with a number two pencil. (They have since created online forms which are just slightly more high tech). Once I started this counting, I became obsessed. Every morning I rushed to the kitchen window to see how many I could count before leaving for work. The more I saw, the better I felt. Looking back now, I give Andrew a lot of credit for not packing up and moving out that winter. Instead, the following winter he proposed to me. While I was watching birds. And photographing them. In sub-freezing weather. On the beach. With my new telephoto lens. But that’s a story for a little later, like on our anniversary (October 20–mark your calendar now).
I never could get the hummingbirds at that apartment. We were too far hidden under two gigantic trees. Hummingbirds need to be beckoned from the sky with bright reds, oranges and pinks. It was just impossible. Which made it an irresistible challenge.
When we moved in to our current home two and a half years ago, I started right away on my mission to attract hummingbirds. I set up feeders. Planned my garden. Planted nothing but hummingbird plants. Every day I went to the window and stared out at my yard, whispering, “pleeeeeeease, hummingbirds, please come.” March, April, May, June, July came and went hummingbirdless. Then one August day, as Andrew and I packed up our car for a week at the shore, I saw something spritely zip by the corner of my eye. It then zipped straight up into the air and over our rooftop in a blink. Could it be?
During that week at the shore, that vision of a hummingbird never left my mind. When we returned from our vacation I inspected the nectar feeders like a kid on Christmas. Empty. Could it be? Could it be?
One evening, after a hard day at work, I stood out on our back steps and stared at my hummerless garden with my usual yearning. Then I saw her. She flitted over to the feeder, took a sip, then kissed each of the bee balm and zipped up to a branch in the maple tree. I stood still and silent, so as not to spook her. Andrew came up behind me and said, “Kate, just give up, you aren’t going to see any humming–” “SSHHHH! Look!” I whispered. Just then she left her perch and within milliseconds was staring us both in the face, just a few feet away. She sipped at the impatiens and the salvia in the flowerboxes on our back steps, exchanging glances with us now and then at eye level. We stood completely still, mesmerized by her invisible wings, her fanning tailfeathers, that tiny little body that could hardly be called a bird. Even Andrew the skeptic stared in silent disbelief. Within a moment *poof* she was gone.
Let me tell you. That, my friend, was exhilarating. God, isn’t nature beautiful?
Since then my “baby girl” follows the same pattern every summer, as hummers often do. She arrives in early August and stays until late September. Then she makes her long trek back to South America for the duration of the winter. My hope is that one of these years she’ll have some young that will come to my yard in early spring and claim it as their territory for the summer, so that my hummingbirdwatching can begin sooner and last longer every year. Til then I wait and I wait. But when she is here, she makes me so happy.
And she is here.
