Our Charming Visitor: A Luminescent Hummingbird

Buy yourself a hummingbird feeder and marvel at the amazing delicacy of a creature of just one ounce.

It doesn't matter where you live, you can probably hang a hummingbird feeder, which costs just a few dollars at your local drug store, outside a window or on a nearby tree branch. In our case, we hung ours underneath a balcony. It's an inexpensive glass bottle with a red plastic cap and four screw on plastic perches. I fill it with a mixture of one-fourth sugar to three-fourths water, and color it with a few drops of red food coloring.

My reward is a shimmering green visitor with a needle beak that flits from our ornamental cherry tree to the perch, sips a minute or two, then flits back to his branch in the tree, about 15 feet away. His metallic green body is so luminescent, so beautiful, similar to the inside of an abalone shell. I hope he brings some friends.

This little fellow captivates me and all our guests, because the beauty, the flittering wings, the teeny beak is so small, yet so profound. Why would God make such a glorious creature? What could have been the Darwinistic superiority of this tiny bird that let it develop with so much showy intensity and yet remain but a sweet ounce?

Help me figure this out. But in the meantime, head to your nearest five-and-dime and buy a hummingbird feeder to revel in the astounding rebirth of spring.