Hummingbirds arrived at our house today. We did not yet have a feeder in place on the breakfast room window but the hummingbirds came to the very place at the window where the feeder had been last year. I continue to be amazed. They are looking good. I should think they would be tattered and ratty looking after their journey of thousands of miles. I wonder where they spent the winter. They were smart to leave this year. Did they cross the Caribbean and lounge about on a Costa Rican beach while we shoveled snow?
Humans seem to be superior animals but we don’t have all the gifts. I could never make that trip without a jet plane. It would be a challenge for me to find the same house and go to the same spot on the same window. My dog with ear flaps that cover her ears can hear the mailman coming several houses away while I hear nothing. Bees can go back to the hive and via a sophisticated dance tell the other bees where to find flowers. I should not be so very smug about being human.
William Bryant said it so well in “To a Waterfowl.”
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,–
The desert and illimitable air,–
Lone wandering, but not lost.
He, who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
In Matthew 6 Jesus said, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”
Written by Roger Bothwell on May 6, 2014
Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
rogerbothwell.org