Cold comforts

So the other day I rolled out of bed early and me and the kid went to Glacier. It was not warm outside, but the sun was shining so it wasn’t bad, either.

I noticed a male calliope hummingbird that consistently lit on a twig high up in the air and sorta deep into the brush.

There was a way to get closer but it required wading in a foot of water and watching my step, because if I stepped to the left a few inches I would have stepped into a beaver channel.

The water wasn’t over my head deep in the channel, but it was deep enough to to make life very unpleasant, especially when carrying 26 pounds of camera gear on your shoulder.

(As an aside a few weeks ago I tore a muscle in my rib cage after I slipped on a log with said camera on my shoulder. The initial pain was pretty painful, but what was far worse was sneezing. I thought I really messed myself up and at one point even suspected it was a return of my coronavirus, so I had an X-ray. The lungs turned out to be fine, but the doc said that if I didn’t stop carrying the camera on my shoulder it would never heal. But it actually did heal, which really surprised me, though a good old sneeze still gives me a little hitch in my giddyup.)

At any rate after wading through the brush and the water I got close enough to the calliope for a good look.

The thing about calliopes, is that while they’re one of the smallest birds in the woods, they have awful attitudes.

This guy was no exception. He vociferously defended his territory against birds twice his size. Why even a bald eagle flew by and I thought the hummer might go after it.

The calliope is a gorgeous bird. By moving the feathers on its throat it can change the way the light reflects off them. They go from dull red to bright purplish-red in a second.

They really are jewels with wings.

While hummers are obviously known for sipping at feeders and flowers, they also eat bugs. I watched this one eat some bugs off a branch. That long slender beak is not a tube and it opens much farther than one might think.

It comes with an equally impressive tongue, which most people never see on a bird that isn’t much bigger than the average thumb.

How nature can pack so much energy into such a little body is beyond me, but I can say this: It’s worth an early morning wade through the water and brush.