Saturday, March 21, 2015

And Then There Were Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds are migratory creatures.  You will see them in Tennessee but not for such a long time as they will fly back to Mexico when the temperature cools.  Monarch butterflies migrate that same long distance ... but hummingbirds don't take five generations to do it.  (The interested student may want to review the Monarch butterfly migration as it's a fascinating exercise.  How in the world does a creature which has ostensibly the brain of a pencil manage to fly thousands of miles ... accurately.)

What this means in the Spring is you wait ... and you wait ... and when are those hummingbirds coming back, man.

They will.  You need a lot of patience with hummingbirds as they are unbelievably fast and photographing them takes the reflexes of a Chinese ping pong player.

So I've got about a minute and a half of video of emerald hummingbirds in Tennessee and, even if I do say so myself, they look highly darlin'.


(Ed:  you were saying about multi-tasking?)

Multi-dorking is when you try to do everything at the same time.  That's the suburban implementation of multi-tasking and, thus far, it has not gone well as nothing ever gets finished that way.

There are three Major Projects right now and the first is "The End of the World in Fort Worth," the second is the Sister Julie CD Project, and the third is getting my act together to play for Cat.  It's been about a week since I mentioned the CD and that's how I do multi-tasking, when the time is appropriate then it's ok to do some multi and at other times I won't touch it.

But now there are hummingbirds.  They're darlin' li'l critters but I don't see them as part of an end of the world story.  Even in my twisted world, that's too weird.


But ... there are the Botanic Gardens near here.  It may be possible to get some footage down there and weasel the hummingbirds into it as if they're down here rather than Tennessee.  Actually they're in Lotho's backyard where I saw more hummingbirds than I have ever seen in the whole rest of my life.  We can pretend they are in Texas for a video, tho.  That might work out ok as otherwise looking at flowers is exciting like watching commercials for extra fibre in the diet.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just plant the right flowers
Two simple plants milkweed for monarch
Red clover for bees
Then butterflies and hummingbirds pink and purples

Unknown said...

Any other time in my life it was remarkable to see a single hummingbird in the rare times I saw one at all and it stunned me how many would show up at one time.

The video was slowed to 1/10 normal speed and still the bird's wings flap about the same speed as any other kind of bird. Extraordinary creatures and it was a privilege to be able to watch them like that.