LITTLE BIRD LITTLE BIRD

My granddaughter Ally, who is Shawn's daughter, asked me to tell you about the time she was really little and in her yard walking up to her house when a hummingbird flew into her hair and passed through and then flew back through her curly blond hair on the other side. I can imagine her eyes wide open and her mouth like a big round oval "OH!"!


     Our friends, Dave and Kathy, lived on the San Francisco peninsula in San Carlos.  Their house was high up in the hills and they had a great view of the bay from their back deck.  You could see San Francisco International Airport and watch the planes in the air vectored out over the bay down as far as San Jose waiting their turns to land.  In a corner of the deck by the stairs was a hummingbird feeder and if you were sitting on the deck at just the right time you could observe the hummingbirds also in the air vectored out over the vista and waiting their turn at the feeder.  So cool!

     On a warm summer evening we were sitting on the back deck at my sister Kim's sipping iced tea.  Something buzzed Robin and she cried out "that's the biggest bug I've ever seen!"  Kim said  "that's the smallest hummingbird I've ever seen".  We laughed and laughed as her Shetland sheepdog herded her two little girls into a corner of the yard.

     My sister-in-law Suzanne told me about the hummingbird that hangs around her house in Burlingame which she and Ray have named  Jack.  She says she was over at her friend Denise's house who lives a few blocks away sitting in the garden having a visit when Denise pointed and said "that's our hummingbird we've named him Jack".  What a coincidence!  Could the two Jacks be the same bird?  Curious.

      I've never seen a hummingbird still, just sitting in a tree or on a branch in a bush or in a nest.  Have you?

     EPILOGUE:  Wednesday June 6, 2012....Rod just came in and told me he was standing outside watering the grass by the pool with a hose when a humming bird flew up and hovered on one side then the other side, over and under the stream of water not in the stream itself but in the fine mist on the outermost  part of the stream and then he landed on the grass and splashed in the water puddle and flew away.

     EPILOGUE II:  March 14, 2015...Ally, whose now fifteen, ran in the house to get me.  Her Mom was pruning the olive tree by my bedroom sliding glass door and found the hummingbird nest with eggs.  Ally is tall enough, 5'8", so I asked her to take a picture for me which you see at the top of this post

 March 15, 2015...Rod got a picture for me of her sitting on her eggs.  Her nest is only about an inch and a half in diameter.  Life is a miracle.