Witness Post: “Hummingbirds Lives”
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, movie director, Werner Herzog, has a great respect for animals. In an interview by John Jurgensen he says : “It is hard to say what his favorite animal is. ‘In Aguirre, the Wrath of God’, hundreds of the little monkeys invaded the raft where Aguirre is half dead, drifting on the Amazon. I had one of those monkeys and he was so sweet and I miss him.”
Herzog went on to elaborate, “But I love some animals that never figured into any of my films….
Hummingbirds.”
“Hummingbirds are a part of one’s soul. The native population in the Amazon thinks that because they are fluttering so fast with thousands of heartbeats per minute that they must have more than one life in them. When I see a hummingbird, I think, ‘You little critter. You know you have more than one life and I wish I could fly along with you.’”[1]
[1] One interesting footnote to Herzog’s affection for hummingbirds is that one cannot truly appreciate the rate of a the birds’ heartbeat, until you have one in your hand. That is where the viewer becomes a participant and really marvels at this tiny flying creature.
What adventures and what lives will you experience with the hummingbirds in your backyard?
Can you imagine it or say it any better than Herzog? Probably not!
A hummingbird’s brain is 4.2% of its body weight, the largest proportion of any species in the bird kingdom. As you might expect, with this comparatively huge brain, hummingbirds are extremely smart. They can remember every flower they have been to, and how long it will take a flower to refill its nectar. A handy skill to have when you visit on average 1,000 flowers in a day! Not your average bird-brain after all! I wonder how many flowers a hummingbird will inspect in its many lives?
Henry E. Hooper 