It’s winter, so my pretty little hummers are sunning themselves in southern Mexico or Panama.  Perhaps they would like to lay on the beach to sun themselves, but their super-charged metabolism requires them to feed every ten minutes, so that won’t work. Either way, they are probably having an enjoyable time in the tropics, but my guess is these little colorful hummers miss me.  Yeah, they miss me and my super-sweet red feeder.

They are amazing little creatures. They breathe 150 times per minute and they are amazing flying machines.  Their wings move in a figure of eight pattern, batting about 50 times per minute, and they are able to hover, and amazingly, are the only birds that can fly backwards.

While they can travel up to 4000 miles to sun themselves in the winter, they have some other interesting behaviors that I have witnessed, even when I am not drinking scotch. They will fly up to my face and stare at me, eyes to eyes, but thankfully, not beak to nose. Seems they are curious and like to investigate me. I did read that they are quite inquisitive about their surroundings, guarding their territory and apparently, their keen memory allows them to remember humans and associate us two-legged non-flyers with the feeder— the guy who fills it with tasty sugar water. Or, they think I am quite handsome when I wear my red baseball cap or my skin is red from sunburn.

   They have been known to fly about a human’s head, to remind them to fill that empty feeder that they landed on with no reward. In fact, avian researchers write that they are one of the smartest bird species and have a hippocampus about five times larger than a songbird. How could a bird that small be so smart I wonder? Sometimes I will sit on the back porch and read a book, turning the pages, or writing my novel in a notebook, and those little buggers come up and look like they are staring at the words, to see what I am reading. Could they be that smart? Do they know the difference between fiction and non-fiction, Hemingway or Camus? Or maybe they are just hungry, and look around asking why is he sitting on his ass and not feeding us beautiful creatures?

I think it’s a little of both actually.  Difficult to prove of course. You see, sometimes I will see a ruby red guy, look at me in the face, then hover around my book, then despite a feeder full of delicious sugar water, he flies away, avoids the feeder then comes back to stare at me. Makes me think that more is going on here than just nature and feeding and being inquisitive, you know? Why in God’s nature then, if he is hungry, does he keep staring at me and looking at what I am reading?

There is only one answer, it seems. I may have cracked the code, and I must say it was a brilliant idea these people came up with, although they usually copy ideas and technology from us, then produce it cheaper and put it to good use.

Some hummingbirds are in fact, Chinese spies. The birds are everywhere, but so are the Chinese:  they are students at major universities, diplomats in various cities, political activists, and of course, owners of Chinese restaurants, always however, spying on us to gather information for the motherland, and at the same time laugh at us when we can’t use chopsticks without them falling on the floor.   And if we catch them, they know how to throw money at us or show us other sweet things to gain our favor. However, only certain hummingbirds find themselves chosen to be trained as spies— only the smartest and prettiest, and therefore, it is difficult to spot them without being in awe, as we spew out our secrets willingly to them and they read our publications, then steal the facts. Yes, the Hummers have been taught to read, and remember, and some also have small video cameras embedded in the pores of their colorful chins. After they record and remember our American secrets, they fly back thousands of miles in the winter, to their Chinese handlers in Mexico or Panama, where the information is harvested, all for free, that is, except for barrels of sweet nectar as payment.

So next time you are out on your deck and the hummers are around you, be careful with the ones who stare at you in the face because they may listen to your conversations or worse, read what you are writing, and you best believe, they do not follow copyright laws.

Acknowledgement:  I would like to thank my friend Glen (Glenlivit 12, single malt scotch), for assisting me with the not very extensive and wobbly background research for this ridiculously important publication.

©S.R.Carson Publications, 2022