Departures

The hummingbirds are migrating south now, and it seems that our regulars have already left.

Last week, right in the middle of the repugnancy in the cellar, I had scrubbed and cleaned all the feeders and filled them with fresh nectar. The next day after doing so, I went out to watch the little things as they fed, but none were there.

Since last Thursday, I have seen only one hummingbird, and he was a male with a very short bill that I have never seen before, probably a migrating fellow passing through and stopping off at a friendly place he’d heard about in some avian chatroom.

I looked all day yesterday, and early this morning, but they seem to have gone.

I will keep feeders out until at least late October, because my journal shows that we have seen them in past years as late as Halloween. I like the idea of a hungry hummingbird swooping down with a kernel of hope in his heart, looking to see if just by chance there might be a feeder out with some old nectar still in it….and finding a clean, fresh meal awaiting him. Those of us who have traveled extensively know what a balm to the spirit it is to happen upon such accommodations.

Before dawn today, I stood out near two of the feeders and looked south and said a prayer for the little creatures — birds and butterflies of all varieties — who are journeying to warmer climes, traveling to where they will live out the purposes for which they came forth. Some of them will not survive the journey. Some will not survive the warm winter down South. This is all a part of it.

I will miss the beauty of my little friends, and I will think of them and hope that I see them again, if not here, then in the heaven I hope awaits me and my kind.

It will be another 90+ degree day today. The heat is wearing on me, and it will be all the more bleak without the lively presence of my hummingbirds.

~ S.K. Orr