This Weekend Is Not About Me.

“Birds have wings; they’re free; they can fly where they want when they want. They have the kind of mobility many people envy.” ~ Roger Tory Peterson

If You Love Hummingbirds, You Will Love This Documentary

Opening Photo credit: PBS Nature
Forked Tongue of the Hummingbird

“They live right at the edge of an energetic trade-off between how much fuel they need to power their flight and the flight they need to find more fuel.“ ~ PBS Nature, Super Hummingbirds

Backyard Feathers: The Best of 2015 Birding (Part 2)

“Location, location, location.” ~ Shannon

Syringe Feeding Joy and A Sleepless Night

“I cannot do all the good that the world needs, but the world needs all the good that I can do.” ~ Jana Stanfield

Hummers Come In To Dine…Play Games?

BADD: Fighting Birding Attention Deficit

Hummingbird Banding Xtravaganza

“The hummingbird competes with the stillness of the air.” ~ Chogyam Trungpa

Schwartzberg: Nature’s Beauty Slowed Down

I want to share something with you that is not from my yard and home for once. When I discover something external that brings joy and gratitude to my own life, it is hard not to pass it on.

I first learned about Louie Schwartzberg last summer while away from our natural yard and creek setting and lusting for daily injections of nature.  When I watched Wings of Life for the first time at the apartment, I fell in love with hummingbirds and bats all over again.  Did you know the bumblebee emits a perfect concert pitch with her wings in order to uniquely extract the tomato’s pollen? No other bee does this!

Schwartzberg’s ability to slow down these animals and insects through high-speed filmography highlights the unique relationship between these creatures and the flower, through a story told from the perspective of the flower (narrated by Meryl Streep). It struck a chord within my nature-loving heart.

If you are a lover of the pollinators — bees, bats, butterflies, birds — you will really love this.  Watch the 7-minute TED Talk excerpt below, four minutes of which are hi-def clips from his films.

Oh! to watch the hummingbird and his twisty-turny ways!  Turn up the volume.

It is wondrous nature, slowed down and appreciated right up close, in a way that only time-lapse and high-speed film can capture.

♣

Got Netflix?

Look for his ‘Moving Art’ series, nature time-lapse
and music streaming right to your screen for the best
background TV noise ever.

Hummers, High Island, and High Hopes

“This could all be yours someday.”  ~ Guster

* * *

Little did we know what Christmas would spark.  When Scottie came in to tell me, There is a Rufous in our tree, I brushed him off in usual fashion.  I thought he probably just wishes there was one, much like the wood stork he talks about could be in our creek out back — but equally as unlikely.  He spends a lot of free time on the iBird Pro app and I can’t tell fact from fiction, especially when he’s deep in the business of learning about something.  I hear about some bird fact no less than 10 times per hour.  A mother can only humor a boy so much. 

Alien Grub, Cushaw Stretches Its Arms