Beautiful post Ann, probably my favorite from you. I spent a lot of time with the ruby throated ones that migrate through Northeastern PA. Our family has a book of 50 years of feeding them and when they come and when they leave.
Through years of observation and reading about their lives my guess is that hyper-territorial bird saw a reflection of himself in the window and attacked it breaking his neck. The combination of their ethereal delicacy and how insanely combative they are with each other is one of the oddest pairings in nature. They are adorable little devils in a constant dogfight around out feeders. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater <no_reply@...> wrote: > > Yesterday my husband handed me, ever go gently, the body of a dead > hummingbird he found outside our window where we keep two feeders stocked > with the sugar/water mixture so necessary for these small birds' survival > during the winters here in Victoria. He fills them every other day because > there is such a demand from these tiny creatures who often arrive, seven or > eight at a time, to flit and drink just outside our kitchen door. > > I took the small, frozen body out to bury it thinking of that frantic heart, > no bigger than a tear, now still within its pearlescent breast. Its eyes were > half open but sightless and that long, exquisitely fine beak as slender as > four strands of horsehair still looking perfect and unbroken, ready to sip > some fragrant nectar from some flower no longer blooming here in December. > And those little wings, usually invisible in their speed, were folded back > along the tiny body, looking so prim but probably just trying to keep itself > warm in those final seconds of having fallen to the ground, dying. > > As I dug a small grave in the front garden underneath a statue of St Francis > (something that used to sit in my parent's yard) I noticed the gnarled > quality of the curled feet at the end of legs as fine as the smallest glass > pipette. And as I laid the little thing into the small hole I had dug and > covered it over, very gently so as not to crush the spent body within, I felt > a mixture of grief and amazement that something this fine, this perfect, this > active - this brilliant winking gem - was so stilled and because of that I > was able to hold it in my hand, an impossibility under any other > circumstances. > > Last night I was awakened by the wind, assaulting the house, driving the rain > against the window behind my headboard and I found myself thinking about the > hummer lying undisturbed under the soil. No wind buffeted there and all would > be quiet, dark and very calm. Strange how one little life, and death, can > fill your thoughts. I'm still thinking about that bird, even as I see seven > others were drinking from the feeders, in this terrible wind, just ten > minutes ago. >
