birds & bees...damsels & hummers...

A Sparkling Violetear Hummingbird
for that gem, Miz Minka

Isn't the essence of Holy Spirit captured in all things winged?

Occasionally, I'll have a dream where I'm not necessarily flying...yet stepping off a cliff results in a gentle wafting towards what would normally have a strong gravitational pull. The movie 'What Dreams May Come' portrayed a more sustained, heavenly floating which made me feel, well, rather homesick while watching.

On our bank of lavender at home, with tips of wands ready to burst into purple rufflettes, we already have baby bees seeking out the nectar. On their first day of doing so, they are usually accompanied by a huge black or velvety brown mom bee. She'll check me out -- hanging in mid-air, effortlessly, giving me the evil eye. At our previous abode, it was the white-blossomed dwarf myrtle that drew hundreds of babies for what I supposed to be their first real meal, their beating wings bringing breath to the air around it. Must plant a hedge of that on our current corner!

Next will come the dragonflies and damselflies, the latter being my current favorite for their fairy wispiness, vulnerability. One must almost 'see with the heart', invite them to appear.

Mourning doves have been pairing up in the neighborhood. I chide them for carelessly hanging out in the gutters, on the lawn, walking across the street. What are you thinking??? You're mating for life! Be careful!!! I wonder if one will be left, lonely, for The Duration. On campus, they nest in light fixtures; and then, for some stupid reason, they kick their babies out a bit too soon, much to the consternation of caring humans. The do hover, cajole, beckon, hopefully drawing the last little one into flight. Their innate sweetness and gentleness contrast with the scrub jays in our yard, who also send their young into the real world, barely ready. If Lucy spies one scurrying across the yard, not yet able to control its wings to flight, she descends -- focussed, undeterred -- effectively dispatching the moving target (she does seem bewildered by the conquest...as if it wasn't what she intended). I console myself with the hope that her action may save a hummingbird's life later.

For (at least) the past four years, a hummingbird has graced the university's student center with a nest under its eaves. She builds it in the same spot atop a pipe just under the ceiling, oblivious to the huge plate glass window that allows a careful observer to watch the miracle unfold. She doesn't always complete the project (reference: scrub jays). Right now, she is sitting on this year's diminutive throne, still as a statue, apparently incubating eggs. I can't wait for the miraculous process to begin...to see her, hovering in mid-flight, sustained by invisible wings, feeding her eager young. Two years ago, she successfully raised two fledglings (the normal size brood for an Anna hummingbird), finally attaching a lure of dead insects to the ceiling over their nest to challenge them to stretch and fly. In the end, with the nest flat as a pancake, barely hanging on by their claws and buzzzzzzing their wings like out of control propellers, in much less than a twinkling of an eye, they finally are gone.

Twenty-two Days in the Hummingbird Nest

is an amazing visual/textual record of the tiny miracle.

And now, a word from Gerard Manley Hopkins:

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Come, Holy Spirit