Needle Nose Hummingbirds

Back in the 1950's, in Central Texas, Mimosa blossoms were a favorite meal for the hummingbirds. We had the largest Mimosa tree in the neighborhood and it had an abudance of flowers all summer long. This attracted hundreds of hummingbirds all through the day, every day. Between the hours of 5:00PM (CST) and 9:30PM it would begin to cool from the often daily highs of 100º F, and the number of hummingbirds would seem to triple. It was a remarkable sight. Recalling it now, in contrast to present day, I am saddened by the disease which has killed off most of the Mimosa trees in Texas.

There were no televisions in the neighborhood at that time, so every evening the neighbors with kids would gather in the yard of a family to visit each other after supper and allow the kids to all play together in the cooler temperatures. Most afternoons, the neighbors came to our yard. We kids sometimes played deep into the night as our parents laughed and mumbled adult things to each other and sat sipping their beer or iced drinks.

Of course, all those little birds became a challenge for the "salt shaker" strategy from my brothers, me, and all the neighborhood kids. The little kids had listened carefully to my salt shaker story and ran to ask their parents if the story was true. With long serious faces, each parent had listened to their child's rendition of my story, seemed to think it over for a few minutes, and then agreed that, yes, it was a true story!

Everybody ran home and got their salt shakers! We crept around and leaped up, attempting to dash salt on the tails of the little birds seemingly suspended in air as they tried to feed. Finally, we emptied the salt in our hands and literally threw salt up in the air in an attempt to get the salt to land on a hummingbird tail so that we could capture the bird. After about thirty minutes of this, and no telling how much damage to the lawn from the salt, we gave up the salt shaker idea, and instead, just started trying to grab them with our hands as they hovered in mid air. Hope ran rampant when one child actually managed to barely touch one. In great enthusiastic ambition, we became even more determined to capture a hummingbird with our hands and doubled our efforts.

Soon, my dad, who had noticed the sudden frenzy we had seemingly gone into over having touched one of the birds, called us over and told us that we had to be very careful if we did manage to catch the birds. They were pretty and seemed harmless, but he pointed out their long, pointy beaks to us. He asked if we remembered what it felt like to get a shot at the doctor's office. Of course, we all did. He went on to say that if we caught the birds with our hands, it would feel just like the needles, or stings from a wasp if the hummingbird decided to peck us! That did it!

Needless to say, we stopped trying to capture the hummingbirds. Oh, we still chased them around the tree, and we would pretend to try and catch them, but each of us had a vision of being punctured by the now very respected beak of the hummingbird. We were sure happy that the hummingbirds did not attack us like the wasps and bugs did, too!

And as the evening light faded toward darkness, we would tire out, and simply sit watching and admiring the beautiful colors and antics of the hummingbirds, pointing at this one or that, happy to just watch and listen to their small squeaks as they, also, faded away to their nests.