I Never Do That

About 6 p.m. I ordered vanilla ice cream for supper and savored every lick. At 8:30 p.m. I went to the mall I hadn't been to for years, and at the Godiva chocolate shop I've never been to, spent $24 on chocolates, which I certainly never do. Most of it went for a gift, but I bought a little golden box of two chocolates and ate them. I never do that. On the way home I stopped to buy a bagel for the next day. I never have bread in the house; too many carbs. At home finished up the day's pasta salad. I never eat pasta--too many carbs--except on Fridays. And I never eat after 7:30 p.m. because "it all goes to fat." Figured I'd just eaten chocolates so the whole day was blown, and after the pasta I went to bed.

Eudialyte, a mineral mined in Greenland

Up early, perfect 70-degree weather, and since I'd finished all my work couldn't decide how to spend the day. Mushroom hunting on a weekend morning would be elbow to elbow--I'll wait for a weekday after a rain. Walked in the woods for an hour, enjoying the morning freshness and spiderwebs sugared with dew. Persistent resentful thoughts clawed me so I put on a pendant made of the mineral Eudialyte, magenta, black, and golden, as a cure. Haven't bothered with pendants and crystals for years. Then I knew what I truly wanted: At the creekside on a shaded white-sand beach, next to a clutch of Virginia bluebells, I took boots and socks off, lay down in the cool sand, listened to the creek and the birds and a big granddaddy frog, and breathed. I almost never do that. My neighbor calls it "earthing." I lay there in peace, watching sycamore branches exercise in the wind, and a hawk riding thermals. I got a notion there to cook up the year's first hummingbird nectar and hang the feeders. They usually arrive around April 24, and for me (and lots of other people) it's an event, a holiday.

I savored a cup of coffee, filled and hung the feeders where I could see them from indoors, and on the porch in the lounge chair bought and downloaded a meditation app, although I never buy apps, and let it play, and breathed in and out, although it's all bogus and woo-woo and I never meditate. Then I looked around and marveled at the story-book-perfect weather. For lunch I split the bagel and stacked it with salami, which I never eat, with double the mayonnaise. Then I thinned my spring-onion crop and weeded some garden space I've neglected for nearly 10 years. Enchanted by the hum of 360-degree calm, peace, and satisfact I knew it'd get even better. Finally I sat down to work, and a hummingbird, the season's first, was at the feeder. --I'd had my day of celebration in advance.

Ladies Last

At the optometrist a male customer and the female clerk were talking about the fading summer while I, waiting for new specs to be fitted,  read all about Brad and Angelina's wedding.

"Only female hummingbirds at my place now," he said.
"Where did the males go?" she said.
"Males are always first to migrate in the fall. They leave the females behind."
"Why?"
"Don't know."
"Probably so they can take care of all the cleaning and locking up."

I'd noticed that my corps of Ruby-Throats became all female every September before the hummingbirds disappeared entirely, but today I learned from hummingbirds.net something I didn't know: that males also arrive first in spring because "the earliest males have their choice of the best territories, which improves their chances of attracting females for breeding." Being early, they risk  not finding enough food. In fall, males depart up to three weeks before the females and the juveniles so as to give the youth a chance to grow a little stronger before their long and demanding flight to southern Mexico and the Yucatan.

Hummingbirds.net also tells me that my regulars probably already left and the ladies I'm seeing squeaking and dive-bombing each other at my nectar feeders are from north of here and are passing through.

The Hummingbirds Are Here

Ever since the big snowstorm three days after the spring equinox, it's been so windy and stormy that the house (and the car!)  feels like a schooner in heavy North Atlantic seas. Today was drippy and dreary. But today the season's first hummingbird drank at my nectar feeder! Knowing that my favorite birds don't usually show up until the wonderfully green and floral dates around April 24 -- but pining for them like a lovesick teenager -- I put up the feeders April 1. Still -- today, a full week early, was the great day! It was a male Rubythroat. I will get his photo and show you his glorious colors ASAP. In the meantime, this is the glory that was ten days ago: my favorite flower, the crocus, during the thaw. The signs of spring come and go so quickly. . .

Spring Bird Report

The towhees, robins and white-throated sparrows are here, but the juncos have not yet left for their homes in Canada. Normally by the third week of March, bluebirds are nesting in their house in the meadow, but this spring they are very few, even around the soybean fields. I'm concerned that the chilly, snowy spring will discourage the hummingbirds who always arrive around April 24, a month from now (with the exception of 2008, when they were very late). Doves have arrived. I made a shelter of tree limbs and branches beneath the bird feeder so the doves can eat without the resident hawks diving and snatching them up for lunch. My year-round cardinals must be either breeding or nesting; they come for their sunflower seeds only very late in the day, at twilight. Owls are calling, but they do this year-round. Eagerly I wait for the whippoorwill or chuck-wills-widow whose nighttime song means "no more frost," but I don't expect to hear one before the end of April. The woodpecker population -- Downies, Hairies, and Pileated -- is normal, which means fat and lazy. The Downies are always first and last at the suet. The Pileateds sleep in until about 9, eat heartily and then go to bed early. This year I have a young pair who don't know me very well and don't yet trust me enough to take their picture.

Found this teacup-sized nest in the blackberry briars when I was cutting a path between them, planning for easier berry-picking this summer. Right now we're awaiting a spring snowstorm, but I am determinedly thinking "spring" and "summer" and "birds" and "berries" while monitoring bird arrivals and departures.

Karma's a Bee

Honeybees without flowers will find what they can; in this case, my hummingbird feeder, where they apparently get tipsy and drown in the sweetness they were after. (One of the red metal "blossoms" on this copper-colored feeder is missing, leaving the hole. But they drown in the other feeder too.) The hummingbirds are now in their final week of residence -- the latest I've ever seen one is October 1 -- all females (for no reason I can figure out), dodging the crawling crowds of honeybees in their efforts to perch and sip. When the hummers are gone for the season, their five-month residence over, I take down the feeders, clean and store them, and cry. Grief is the price one pays for love.