Antillean Crested Hummingbird
When our family lived in Caracas, the American newspaper, The Daily Journal, ran a contest. They showed a cartoon of a cute little alien with his palm extended. Contestants were to caption the cartoon and the best caption would win a week’s trip to Barbados for two.
My dad, who as far as I know never had any interest in aliens, entered a caption: Yes, we do deliver. And it won! He paid the difference for my sister and I and a few months later, we landed in Barbados, an island in the Netherlands Antilles. I think I was 12, which meant my sister was nearly 7.
We stayed at a very cool hotel in Bridgeport, the main town. The hotel, I remember, was small, and we had a suite or apartment on the first floor. Out back, there was an open porch that faced the beach. It had a table and chairs and a glorious view of the beach. Every afternoon, waiters brought around the tea and crumpets and the four of us would sit out there, sunburned from our beach combing, and sip tea like proper British folks, which we weren’t.
One afternoon, I was sitting out there by myself, trying to decide if I should dip my spoon into the sugar bowl and add a couple of teaspoons to my tea, which I didn’t really like. A hummingbird suddenly appeared on the porch and touched down on the edge of the sugar bowl. I was shocked. I’d never seen a hummingbird this close before. It was a beautiful little thing with luminous bluish green wings like the bird in the photo above. And it moved fast, those wings pumping, fluttering, keeping it aloft as it dipped its delicate beak into that mountain of sugar in the bowl.
I think this memory is so vivid for me, so many years after the fact, because it was when I realized, if only intuitively, that we are all part of a much larger picture. It was the instant that I recognized I was part of an intricate web of sensations and connections that extended well beyond my little world of family, friends, Venezuela and this Barbados trip. That hummingbird and I were connected in an inexplicable way. I tasted that sugar when he dipped his beak into the sugar bowl. I felt the frantic beat of his wings, the hammering of his little heart, his fear of me as a huge shape nearby. But his hunger overcame his fear and he feasted from that sugar bowl.
Ever since, I have been fascinated by hummingbirds. In Ecuador some years ago, we stayed in a place in the high mountains where hummingbirds flocked to the feeders in the evening, dozens of them vying for food, their wings moving so fast they generated a sound, a collective humming. We stood at the windows watching them up close, jut a thin pane of glass between us.
During the winter months here in Florida we sometimes spot hummingbirds, the ruby-throated variety. In fact, the other day, I was thinking about my parents, both deceased, and a pair of hummingbirds touched down on the plants just outside my window.
A shudder of shock tore through me. Mom? Dad? Really? Was I seeing what I thought I was seeing? Maybe these figures were actually fast-moving butterflies. Or something else altogether.
They were there – then gone.
And I thought of the Barbados hummingbird way back when, and how my family and I had come to be in that place, at that time, when the beautiful little bird touched down on the edge of the sugar bowl. My parents had made that trip possible. I was pretty sure they had just dropped by to say hello.
I too love hummingbirds, there is something very magical about them.
Like Daz, I would love to see a hummingbird in real life. Your beautiful story transported me there though! 😀
Until Daz mentioned that Australia doesn’t have hummingbirds, I never even considered that possibility. Then Mike Perry of the UK said the same thing. I always thought they were worldwide.
Well, the little beautiful suckers should be worldwide!
A beautiful story.
What a lovely story! Yes, hummingbirds and other animals often seem to be the “touch stones” or messengers in the course of our life journeys………….for me it’s been butterflies.
I remember your butterfly stories!
My first morning in a canyon above Malibu I stepped out onto the verandah & a hummingbird hovered about 2 ft from my face as if looking at me for a couple of minutes. I love them, but we don’t have them here. Have wanted a hummingbird feather for years if anyone got access to one will pay postage!
A hummingbird feather…hmmm… I will look around our yard.
Love your story! When my husband and I were visiting my sister and her hubby in their home on on the lake in Missouri, I was sitting in a glider on their deck, which ran all the way across the front of the house. (The front faced the lake and was only about fifteen feet from their own little stretch of beach.) My sister, as I, loves birds, and she has all kinds of bird feeders around the deck and in her garden. That morning, I was wearing a typically Floridian floral mu-mu, with bright flowers all over it. My(then deceased) Mother had loved birds, too, and had an enormous collection of porcelain and ceramic birds of all kinds. I was thinking about Mom and her birds, and suddenly a tiny hummingbird left its perch on the sugar-water hummingbird feeder and zipped over to me, lighting on one of the orange hibiscus flowers on the sleeve of my mu-mu, wings spinning. I stopped breathing. It stayed there for several seconds, as if it thought the flower on my dress was real, then it zipped back to the feeder. I felt very strongly that it was my Mom saying hello! It was thrilling, to say the least!
Great story, CJ!
I’d love to see a hummingbird, but we don’t have them in Australia.
Next time Johnny Depp and his wife come to visit I’ll ask them to bring one over on their airplane. 😉
No hummingbirds?! I didn’t realize that. Depp to the rescue!
The Johnny Depp reference in my comment was about the hot-water he and his wife got into bringing their dogs into Australia and having to make that “hostage” video to avoid jail-time.
I wrote about it in this post on my blog –
https://brizdazz.blogspot.com.au/2016/04/barnaby-red-joyce-ing-over-depps-video.html
Off to check out that link.