Hummingbird Warriors

There are warriors living in the trees behind my house. At least two tribes, though there may be more, and they are in a state of war. One of those tribes, and more specifically their leader, is clearly the more dominate of the two but the fighting, none the less, has been fierce. We have watched their leader use tactics of stealth and camouflage that would make any Marine smile. My wife and I have literally watched pitched battle after pitched battle between these combatants right in front of our faces. In fact some of the fighting has been so close to us that we could have reached out and touched them. Despite this there have been no casualties that I am aware of, and our house remains undamaged.  Did I mention that these warriors are only about 2 inches long?

These fearsome warriors are in fact Hummingbirds. I had never realized just how tough and tenacious these birds can get over food and territory or how little fear they have of humans. In the course of dive bombing each other they have literally been inches away from us and have shown no fear. I remember the day we put up the feeder and flowers for them because even before we had the rod secure in place they were landing six inches from my head and calmly drinking the mix.

The dominant males’ tactics seems to have come straight out of a military handbook. He hides in the trees, remember he is small and green, and he waits for the “enemy” to be fully engaged in the drink before he dive bombs them. Doesn’t matter if it’s a male or a female, he charges them and you can hear them make contact at high speed. It hurts me just to watch it, but it doesn’t seem to slow them down much. There is one female that he is sweet on though, you can tell because he only drives her away a couple of times before he sits back and watches her drink, she generally doesn’t go far when he tries to scare her off and she has been the one who has come so close to us that we could have touched her. Yesterday, as I was watching them, three females ganged up on him and drove him away! It was funny because I could see where he was hiding, and every time he tried to approach they would chase him off.

What is really amazing though is that they don’t kill or even seriously hurt each other over it. I would imagine that there must be some pain involved as they smash into each other at Mach one, but the facts remain that they don’t kill each other on purpose over territory or food and in the end they all still manage to survive.

The thing I really like about them though is their tenacity. They keep coming back determined to get some of the food regardless of how many times they get batted away by the alpha male. They know that there is food there and they are going to have some regardless of the cost.

There is a lesson to be learned.  There are many issues going on in this country right now and while I hear many say that we need to change things, there seems to be a lack of people who are willing to actually do something to change things. The excuse I always hear is that the problem is too big and we are just too small to accomplish anything. What were the founding fathers of this nation if not small in the eyes of the biggest and most powerful nation on the planet at that time? They knew things had to change, they also knew that there were a whole lot of people that weren’t terribly excited about their plans, but despite all those huge obstacles they went ahead with Declaration of Independence and prevailed after many dangers and trials.

My hummingbirds seem to know that if you are going to eat you are going to have to take a chance at getting slapped around and dive bombed in order to do so, yet they don’t cower in fear and they don’t make excuses as to why they can’t get to the feeder they just simply keep at it until they succeed.

Be a Hummingbird.