True-Life Adventures on "The Rock" IV

The Sound of their Wings

I've been stalking them for days, getting up at dawn to catch a glimpse, but they have no schedule, no time-table.

Then, sudenly, out of the corner of my ear I'll hear one...BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR--a biker-bird is revving its Harley, but I can't see them. They're perpetually "over there," out of sight and out of the range of my camera. We have two hanging fuchsia plants to tempt them and they frequently stop and sip. But not when I'm there. I'll hear a "WHOOSH" as they change course away from the plants when they see me.

They're perfectly content to hover tantalizingly in front of me when I'm behind glass; I always have the impression they're appraising me, trying to figure me out, as I am, them. Then, they hover away, the VTOL-jets of birds--skittish, shy, unapproachable.

And when I finally give up and go outside, I hesitate over the door jam and listen for the sound of their wings. I know that as soon as I'm in the house they'll swarm, the teasing little devils.

Damn them.

I hope they come back soon.

It's a tentative relationship.

When James Lipton asks his ten questions at the end of "Inside the Actor's Studio," I perk up for the "sound" questions: "What sound or noise do you hate?;" "What sound or noise do you love?" I have a few choices for the latter*
One of them is the sound of hummingbirds in flight, and I love that particular sound because it initially scared the crap out of me.

I was somewhere...not sure where...and a loud, low buzz crept up behind me. I became alarmed, thinking it was the biggest bee in the world (it had to be to generate such a commotion), only to turn around to see this delicate little bird do a double-take at my turning and then hit its after-jets to "vroom" out of there. It was a pleasant surprise, one of those moments of nature-wonder ** It made me suspect how people came to believe in faeries.

Since then, I've recorded hummingbirds. I have a nice, scary recording of a feeder outside a Lake Quinalt restaurant. At Normnady Park, I kept tabs on a lone hummingbird who kept a year-long vigil in the park, emitting a very loud version of the typical hummingbird chirps, but I never saw another bird answer its call and inevitably around 11:30 am it would take off to go eat.

I can't tell the local three hummingbirds apart by their coats, although two of them have alarming green back feathers and one of them, an orange back. But I can tell them apart by the sound of their flying. Hummingbirds' wings beat 70 times a second, but that still allows enough wiggle-room to make each sound distinctive. One of them sounds like a lawn-mower, loud and aggressive--this one you can hear approach the porch through the windows. The other two are quieter, more delicate: one stays awhile and does a circuit around each plant, then goes over to our yellow thermometer hanging on the shed door--no doubt confusing it for a flower, but I like to think it's checking the temperature; the other sounds like the Jetson's car, a combination of a low throb with a high-toned razor-like edge to it.

Once, while sitting near an open window I heard "The Rock's" equivalent of NASCAR--one hummingbird flew by (veeeee-oooh) followed a half-second later by another (vroooom). Five seconds later, the other direction (veeoooh, vroom). Five seconds later, back, the other way (veeooh, vrooom). I thought, "What are they doing, taking laps?" Just another day at the races.

Humminbirds fascinate me. The skeletal structure that can move that fast and be so delicate is astonishing. I once had occasion to capture a seagull that had been injured on a street in Seattle. The studio's accounts person and I trapped the frightened bird, and coaxed it into a box to take to an animal shelter/clinic. But when I picked up the boxed bird, I was amazed at how incredibly, unbelievably light it was--like no weight at all, and it was a large bird. What must a hummingbird weigh? What is less than nothing? And yet it beats its wings seventy times a second and achieves great speed in its hovering, helicoptering way.

I don't know what it is about hummingbirds that fascinate me so--that makes me rush to the window to catch a glimpse in the same way the more rare occasion of whales did. It could be the sound of their wings, and that uncomprehensible statistic that causes it. It might be their ungainly appearance--the fat little bodies and the smooth head and the improbable sipping straw that precedes all. It might be the personality of their flying; they're fast enough that they can afford to wait--and observe and appraise, maybe judge. I find it incredibly moving to be observed by Nature, rather than vice versa. Usually Nature is too busy running away. Maybe it's that they're a complete mystery to me. The scientists say that bees shouldn't be able to fly, yet they do. It must be the same for the hummingbird. How do they do it? Despite theory and math and engineering, the fact of the matter is...they do...without a second thought, in defiance of all the sciences and disciplines.

I suppose they fascinate me for the same reason, as the joke goes, that hummingbirds hum. We don't have the words.

This is the closest I came to photographing one of the hummingbirds, the swine.

* For the record, the sound I hate: the sudden screech of car-brakes, with or without a subsequent thud. The sounds I love: thunder, the distant horn of a train, that transition sound when rain becomes a shower, and the wings of hummingbirds. Oh! and that "woggedy-woggedy" sound cartoon characters make when they shake their heads.

** Nature doesn't astonish me much. But every so often it can knock me on my ass. I've mentioned my "religious experience" seeing the Grand Canyon at dusk. But the older I get, Nature can still pack a wallop. When K. and I took her mother to see friends in her home-state of Missouri, it was the first time I encountered fireflies. I always remembered a "Beetle Bailey" comic where the platoon "brain" turned a bivouac into what one character called "Shangri-la." They provided light to the soldiers by catching fireflies in containers--"Do you want a 70 firefly or 100 firefly bulb?" they would ask. Great idea, that. But it didn't prepare me for the glowing motes I saw that August evening that winked on and off floating in the dark. It was surreal and comforting, all in the same vision.