The Hummingbird Wars

Along the eastern edge of the meadow here I put in clumps of beautiful dark red beebalm, the native monarda. They’re upright plants, with tall stalks and dense moppy heads. In July and August these glow against the dark shadowy woods beyond.
I planted them for the hummingbirds. Hummingbirds love red flowers, and I love hummingbirds. We have native red beebalm, the red and pink native honeysuckle, lonicera, and the native trumpet vine, campsis radicans, though this takes ten years to bloom, we learned after planting it. We put it in seven years ago, and so far it has busily covered the walls of the garage in a thick green tapestry, but no more. It seems to be holding out for the decade.
My bird book describes the hummingbird family – Trochilidae – as the smallest birds. The only ones we get here in Maine are ruby-throated hummingbirds, Archilochus colubris. A learned friend told me that Archilocus was a Roman soldier famous for his retreats, during battle: apparently the hummingbird is the only bird who can fly backwards.
The shining blur of wings rotates in both directions. My learned friend told me, too, about sitting on a screened-in porch one afternoon, reading, when he heard the sound of a sudden small collision. He looked up to see a hummingbird, his long tiny beak stuck fast in the screen. He was momentarily impaled, the delicate proboscis caught in the minute metal grid. But it was only for a moment: the bird’s wings began to blur again, and he hummed rapidly backwards like the Roman and was gone. (The Archilocus incident explains those tiny mysterious gaps that appear in metal screens. I’d always wondered what produced them – very powerful mosquitoes, muscling their way inside?)
My bird book also describes the hummingbirds as “pugnacious,” and though it saddens me to say this about a friend, they are. They are ferocious. I will also admit, caught up by candor, that most of the ones I see around here are not males but females – throats a dull green, not ruby. It’s the females that fight. They are Amazons, fierce warrior queens with volcanic tempers and belligerent manners.
One afternoon I watched a hummer moving from blossom to blossom among the sorberias along the fence by the house. These graceful shrubs have long white plumy blossoms and lacy green leaves. It was a pretty sight, the tiny bird poised and motionless in the air, regal, perfectly erect, her wings shimmering magically, her green back glittering and iridescent. Focused and intent, her movements mysteriously abrupt, she moved from white plume to white plume. As she hovered and rose and dropped and hovered, I became aware of a noise, and of motion nearby. There was a tiny, shrill, “Chick, chick, chick,” and something swirled in the air over her. It was another hummer, small as a green bee, moving in sweeping arcs over the first bird’s head, each arc lower than the one before. She swooped over the head of the feeding bird, the arc dropping with each swing, like th ominous sweep of an executioner’s axe. “Chick, chick, chick,” she shrieked homicidally. The first bird slid sideways; she vibrated back and forth in alarm; finally she ducked under a wide branch of sorberia. She hovered there, assaulted by the wild cries of the invader, until she rose suddenly and zoomed off into the open spaces of the meadow, and she was gone.
They do this all the time.
They must have something else to do in the mornings, somewhere else to be, but in the late afternoons I find them at the edge of the meadow, by the beebalm. There’s a birch tree next to one stand of flowers, and a big mass of bay bushes behind it. The hummingbirds zoom in and out of the flowers, perching, suddenly still, on a branch, then shifting into motion again, as though they were casting a quick magic spell on themselves. They rise up among the flowers, heads raised, beaks poised, wings invisible. Then a new one arrives, instantly outraged, and they zoom at each other, buzzing furiously. They pursue each other at high speeds, from beebalm stand to beebalm stand. “Chick, chick, chick!” they scream, in high, tiny voices, wild with fury. They’re always in a state, those microscopic hearts always beating a frenzied tattoo of rage, faster than we can imagine.
Once last year I was standing on the porch, watching a hummingbird feeding on the tall plume poppies next to the fort door. He hung in midair among them, probing each flower delicately with his beak, his wings shimmering in the sunlight. I stood nearby, watching. Finishing, he moved on, from the flowers toward me. He hung in the air in front of my face, shifting slightly, a bright iridescent shimmer in the air. He was very close, no more than two feet from my face, and his bold dark gaze was fixed on me. Under his long fierce stare I began to feel odd, then faintly uneasy, as though this tiny, satiny feathered thing might contain – what? some threat? I stepped back instinctively. He peered at me a second longer, made an avian executive decision, then sped away. It wasn’t until I went back inside, past the mirror in the front hall, that I realised how I looked to a hummingbird: the frames of my glasses are bight red. In the dim light of the porch, it must hav seemed interestingly like two red rims of blossom. It was a flower he didn’t know, but one possibly worth investigating, worth piercing with his long pointed bill, drilling into it as though it were a metal screen. When the blossoms retreated nervously into the darkness he lost interest, though, and hummed swiftly off into the sunlight, looking for other realms to conquer. Much as I love hummingbirds, I was just as glad not to have gotten to know that particular one any better.
I still love them, though. I like having them around. I like finding them, in the late afternoons, perching among the beebalms, waiting for a fight to get into.