In Search of Hummingbirds
by
Arlene L. Mandell

     I was more than half way through my allotted years before I ever saw a hummingbird. Then, while in Phoenix on vacation, I had my first glimpse. On a searing l00 degree morning, I was following a child's activity map at the Desert Botanical Gardens. I'd already found a hairy cactus, a bird's nest, and a cactus that looked like an old man.
      I was startled when something like a big bee flitted past me. It hovered overhead, so close I could almost touch it, before dipping into a desert flower. I should be using high-speed film, I thought, as I attached the zoom lens and tried to focus. After the film was developed, I knew a certain overexposed blur was a hummingbird, but couldn't remember anything about the creature, not even its colors. I had been more interested in capturing its image than actually seeing it.
      I returned to my home in northern New Jersey and my hectic life as a public relations executive. Some time passed. Early one June morning I glanced out the dining room window to see if the newspaper had been delivered. Every day I barely had time to skim the paper before joining 400,000 commuters on the West Side Highway, all rushing to midtown Manhattan. For ten years I had been driving on the same clogged artery, headed to a sunless office on the thirty-eighth floor of a sleek midtown building. I had a "glamorous" job as a vice president in an international conglomerate and was paid generously for my efforts.
     At first I had a distant view of Central Park, but another office building was under construction and soon my view was nothing but concrete and glass. On behalf of my clients, I wrote witty press releases about everything-carpets, champagne, eye shadow, even frozen chicken dinners. I wrote about nothing.
      This particular morning, as I glanced outside, the azaleas were blooming. And there, sipping nectar, was a hummingbird with lustrous emerald-and-ruby-colored feathers. The tiny bird was exquisite, its appearance an omen, though I didn't realize it at the time. Instead, I looked at my watch, picked up my attaché case and went to my car.
      Two months later, I resigned. A year later I began a new career as an adjunct English professor. My salary was minuscule but I had my summers free to travel, to write and to dream. During a winter semester break, I visited a hummingbird feeding station on the island of Jamaica. The woman who owned the property was in her eighties. She had devoted twenty years to luring the birds by providing fruit and nectar. With the aid of a trained bird handler, I held a tube of sugar water. Three different types of hummingbirds sipped nectar as though I were just another kind of flower.
      Another five years passed and I retired to a hillside near Annadel State Park in Santa Rosa, California. Soon I installed a hummingbird feeder. Within minutes the first visitor arrived. A few days later, as I was picking roses and lavender for a bouquet, something brushed my leg. I ignored it. I was holding the flowers heads-down as I moved through the garden. A moment later I felt the feathery touch again and glanced down. An iridescent green and fuchsia bird was sampling the bouquet. Slowly I raised the flowers in front of me. The bird darted back and forth until, sated, it flew to a hidden nest in a toyon tree.
     In the heat of my summer garden, enveloped in the fragrance of roses and lavender, I had been touched by something magical, a creature James Audubon once called "a glittering fragment of the rainbow." I learned something that day-it takes stillness and serenity to absorb the beauty of these tiny creatures. And I'm still learning. 

Arlene L. Mandell is a retired college professor, former writer with Good Housekeeping and journalist. Her poetry, essays and short stories have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. In Sonoma County her work has appeared in The Dickens and Women's Voices. For a copy of her chapbook, "Variations on a Theme, " contact Arlene at

1430 White Oak Dr.
Santa Rosa, California
95409

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