On Hummingbirds, Bougainvillea and Hitchcock

Or the day I almost committed manslaughter.

A hummingbird perches on my shoulder, its beak poised to dip into the gardenia tattooed years ago as punishment for a crime against nature.  

There’s a lot of folklore around these tiny creatures. The bible suggests they’re a “symbol of joy, happiness, and life itself” (Birds Idea). Indigenous cultures view hummingbirds variously as healers, resilient, adventurous, and a sign of good luck. As a spirit animal, the hummingbird suggests its human companion is agile, spiritual, loving, and gracious. And from Smithsonian’s Nation Zoo: “hummingbirds are, for the most part, unsociable.” If I adopted the idea of spirit animals, I’d embrace the hummingbird. As a writer inclined to sequester herself for hours, days, and sometimes weeks, I can relate to an intense need for solitude, though I don’t believe I’m unsociable. Perhaps it’s time to rethink my lifestyle.

Twelve years ago I sipped coffee in my kitchen and watched a hummingbird dance around my yard. For days I observed it fly in and out of the overgrown bougainvillea (boo-guhn-vi-lee-uh) that crept along our house’s back wall. One morning, after the bird flew out of the tangled green and magenta vines, I peeked into the spot where I saw it leave. Inside: a nest with three eggs, each the size of a kumquat.

When my granddaughter came home from school I showed her the nest. Religiously, we monitored the eggs’s progress; days later, they hatched. Three tiny grey feathered balls squished together, indistinguishable from one another.  Before long the feather balls morphed into chicks and I began vidoetaping with my cheap Flip Video Cam (remember those POS devices?).

I recorded the chicks’ movements and Mama bird flying back and forth from our birch trees to her nest, tending to them.  One day I captured on my cam a chick fly from its nest for the first time!  By early summer the second and third chicks flew off; it was the last we saw of the hummingbird family. I was sad but looked forward to the birds return the following year. 

Instinctively, migrating birds know where to migrate and how to navigate back home. They use the stars, the sun, and earth’s magnetism to help them find their way. They also almost always return home to where they were born. Because of this, you could be right if you think you see the same bird each year in your yard.  (Kaytee Aviary Foundation.).

In September our landscaper reported that the bougainvillea had gotten too wild and was creeping underneath the house. Very likely, he told us, it was threatening our home’s foundation. We (actually, my husband) made the decision to remove the bougainvillea.  It was a gorgeous plant and I couldn’t watch it being uprooted so left for the day. That evening I went out to the patio and saw the bare spot where my lovely plant used to live. I struggled not to cry, then realized we’d probably seen the last of the hummingbirds. I lost it.

The next spring I bought hummingbird feeders. Dozens. I hung them on the patio canopy, our birch tree branches, the lantern hinge next to the patio door, and on Shepherd hooks all around our yard.  No birds visited that summer. The following two years, however, a pair came (I’m tempted to quote Field of Dreams but I’l spare you).  I saw no nest-building, so resigned myself to believing hummingbirds nest only in the sweet, bright bougainvillea blossoms. The summer after my husband died, wanting to bring joy back into my life, I added even more colorful feeders and crossed my fingers.

April of 2022 I reorganized my patio. The miniature yellow rose tree I’d planted the previous summer was taller and had new growth. An abundance of fresh leaves and tiny buds were intertwined with wilted green and brown leaves that hung limply from the tree. Branches I’d forgotten to prune in October.  I grabbed my shears and trimmed, being careful to not disturb new growth.  As meticulous as I worked, I couldn’t prevent thorns from ripping my hands. After a particularly deep gouge that stung like Hell, I decided I’d had enough. Because I didn’t feel like walking ten whole feet to grab gloves from the garden shed, and unable to avoid getting my hands torn up I began to hack away at the tree. Frustrated, I no longer cared about preserving new growth. 

As I worked, a hummingbird hovered, flying above and around me, at times dangerously close and buzz buzz buzzing furiously.  At one point I swore she glared at me and I had visions of Hitchcock’s The Birds so imagined a flock of hummingbirds converging on my back yard, aiming to peck out my green eyes. [In case you didn’t know… Alfred Hitchcock based his film on Daphne du Maurier’s short story, The Birds. It’s a fascinating tale and well worth the read.]

With nearly all the branches gone I was tempted to stop but decided to just denude the tree and let it start afresh (kinda-sorta like rebooting your computer when it refuses to behave). I subdued my fear of the menacing bird and hacked off another branch. As it fell away, the hummer flew closer still, clearly agitated and threatening me. Determined not to be bullied by a creature that weighed little more than a wiffle ball, I reached for the final branch. And then I saw it. Nestled in the tree's crook, a nest made of birch tree bark, barely distinguishable from the tree’s bough. Tucked inside, two feathery chicks.  Ack!  When my heart resumed beating, I rushed to gather the twigs and branches that littered my lawn. One by one I shoved them into the rose tree’s limbs, gingerly tucked them around the nest, being careful to not touch it with my filthy hands. I worked frantically, causing the gouge in my palm to open up and bleed. Finally, I stepped away. At that, the mother bird flew up and settled into the birch tree that shielded us. 

I left the patio to stand inside my kitchen, peering through the screen at the bird, still perched on a limb yards above its nest.  She showed no signs of returning to it. I began to pray to no one in particular: “Please send her back. Please!” I use telepathy to send a message to Mama Hummer:  “Don’t abandon your chicks.  Please. Go back. Please just go back.”  And this is where I write:

The mother, channeling my pleas, rocketed out of the birch tree and down to her babies.  

I would love to write that.  But this is a true story so I can’t. Eventually I gave up, resigned to the fact that Mama Hummer detected my nasty human scent and, thus, would never return. The feathery chicks, just days (maybe even hours) old, approximately an inch long, and weighing about the same as a raisin (half a gram) would starve to death.

"… birds may abandon nests for a variety of reasons: they may have been disturbed too often, [whether] by predators or human activity."  (Cornell Lab of Ornithology)  

Hummingbird Nest, Author’s Patio, April 2022

From the kitchen window, I watched the hummer; she refused to budge.  Eventually, I went about the business of cleaning my house, taking a shower, dressing. I brought Mia, my pesky dog for a walk.  Throughout the day I checked the rose tree a thousand times. Nothing. Other than Mama Hummingbird who’d left her perch on the birch tree, there was no change.  No movement.  No sign of life.  No disturbance in the force.  Even the wind seemed to have died.  I had nightmares that night.  In one of them, Hitchcock stood at the foot of my bed and wagged his fat finger at me. 

Exhausted, the next morning I trudged down to my kitchen and turned on the Keurig. I made a mental note to schedule Martin to ink a hummingbird on my shoulder to honor the one I’d forced to abandon her chicks. I figured going through the torture would be my penance for having committed manslaughter (technically, I guess it would be chick-slaughter). A few months later Martin drilled the bird into my shoulder as I wept. [Btw, did you know that one of the most painful places to get a tattoo is on the inner wrist? Of course the level of pain one experiences varies from person to person, but I can personally attest to the fact that that getting inked on one’s inner wrist hurts like a SOB!].

As I waited for coffee to brew I slid the patio door open to let in fresh air. I told myself I wouldn’t, but couldn’t help glancing at the rose tree.  And this is where I write:

The mother bird, startled by the sound of my door, flew from the patchwork rose tree that cradled the nest that held her chicks. She disappeared into the birch that stood yards away. I slid the door close, took a step back and moved to the kitchen window where, after few minutes, Mama Hummer left her perch on the tree limb and returned to the rose tree nest.  She leaned in and dropped something into each chick’s hungry little beak. 

And, of course, that’s exactly what happened.