By KAREN MADORIN
During the second week of September, we left Kansas to roam Wyoming mountain ranges. I had one big regret. This time of year, Western Kansans have fleeting chances to see migrating hummingbirds, and I would be out of town during that window of time. To add to my regret, hummers that summer in Wyoming mountains had headed South so I wouldn’t see them there either.
A kind neighbor agreed to water my garden and flowers to keep things going for pollinators. She did a great job so, despite the ongoing heat wave, our cosmos, zinnias, marigolds, petunias, nasturtiums, geraniums, and other blooms continued to thrive.
Once we returned from our journey, I immediately visited to the backyard to find we had more insects zipping from blossom to blossom than I’d seen at one time all summer. Butterflies, bees, dragonflies, beetles, and other winged creatures spent their day gorging on late season pollen. Seeing their activity made me wonder if I’d missed a visiting hummer.
Ironically, the next day my husband asked me if I’d noticed a hummer drinking from our bird bath. Rats! I’d missed one of my all-time favorite summer visitors. Hoping I’d get another chance, I boiled up a one to four mixture of sugar and water and let it cool. My husband dug out our stored-away feeder, which I filled with sweet syrup. It was still in the high 90s and low 100s during the day so I knew I’d have to clean the bottle daily and put out new feed to prevent bacteria from growing. The chance of seeing one of these tiny hoverers was worth the work, so I sat on the deck or kept watch from our kitchen window in hopes of seeing our guest.
Patience paid off, thank goodness. While I sat outside taking photos of bugs on our garden flowers, an iridescent green flash zipped into my petunias for a quick meal. It totally ignored the still-full feeder. While I wrapped my mind around the fact a nearby hummer sampled nectar from our flowers, it made a couple more hovering stops at different blooms and then swooped to the bird bath for a quick slurp.
I had the Nikon chest high and pressed the On button but never focused on the target before the hummer headed south of our yard. Dang it! I had my chance and got so involved in watching it move swiftly from one red petunia to another that I never got the camera to my eye.
Over the years, I’ve had people tell me photographers are so busy taking pictures they don’t actually enjoy what they’re seeing in the moment. Even though I like taking photos, I think there’s merit to that thought. Considering I opted to keep watching the bird in action says there is a difference between seeing something through a camera lens and actually watching an entire scene play out before your eyes.
In this case, I definitely got caught in the instant and failed every effort to capture the shot. That said, I’m not sorry. As fleeting as it was, my heart thrilled to watch a travel weary hummingbird ignore sugar syrup to find natural nectar from our petunias and then drink fresh water from our bird bath. God speed, little bird, as you travel South for the winter.