THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 1, 1995 TAG: 9509280203
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ronald L. Speer
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
Native Americans had a way of tagging seasons and months that made them memorable.
The Sioux, for instance, might have called August ``the moon when the chokecherries ripen'' because that's when they picked the big-pitted but tasty fruit in Nebraska's Sand Hills.
So I've always tried to put a label on special times, and to me the hot months of '95 will always be marked as ``the summer the hummingbirds came.''
We were hosts for scores of the amazing little fellows from the first weekend in April until the middle of September.
I haven't seen another since, but they provided grand entertainment for month after month in our first summer in our house on Roanoke Island.
For a while last week, I thought they had returned, because as I watched the sun set, dozens of little creatures swarmed around what I think is a ginger lily, running 4-inch tongues into the bowels of white blossoms. They were the size of hummingbirds, with pinkish backs, and their wings flapped a mile a minute. But they weren't feathered.
Kill Devil Hills librarian Barbara White solved the riddle.
She said my visitors apparently were Carolina Sphinx moths, often called hummingbird moths. They generally feed in the twilight.
They develop, said the librarian, from a tobacco or tomato worm.
Yuk. Give me the charm and beauty of the real thing that comes from an egg.
When the first hummingbirds arrived in April, I put up feeders that hung about two feet from the bay window in our kitchen.
And dawn after dawn after dawn was spent watching the tiny little fellows hover - their wings flapping 50 to 75 beats per second - as they sipped sugared water.
One minute the feeder was empty - and then in a blink a hummingbird was there - and then it was gone.
Experts say the paper-clip-sized birds can dart around at speeds of 60 miles an hour.
They make perfect role models in the morning when I'm trying to build up steam, and watching their never-ending output of energy helps me to jump-start my day.
Some days they headed for the flowers in the yard and scorned the feeders, particularly when the bees congregated at the artificial offerings. But I finally found feeders with no place for bees to sit, and the hummingbirds came back to the bay window.
I have no idea how many nested in the yard. I've seen more than a hundred in a day, but many of them probably were repeat performers.
Now they probably are somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico, their little wings flapping furiously as they head for their winter quarters in Central and South America.
Since they've gone, I've put up bird feeders in front of the bay window for less exotic birds this winter, and I'll enjoy the feathered friends who call this home.
But it's nice to know that throughout the winter I can think of April as ``the moon the hummingbirds return.'' by CNB