Morning all. We have reached the end of October and the end of another week. Shall we se what the first prompt of November brings us? Timers set and let’s fid out. Fifteen minutes with no stopping please.
Oh I suspect those aren’t going to be hummingbirds. Not sure od the story leans towards good fairies or bad. I may need to take some time to figure it out.
Friday, November 1st: It was hard to see.
It was hard to see. He held still waiting. There was a flash of movement and he remained still. He couldn’t really see it but he could see the movement it was like watching a dark dot dance around the back yard. He wondered if he had put his cameras in the right locations but made a conscious effort not to move. He would have to trust them.
If he moved the small thing would disappear again. He didn’t want to risk scaring it off completely. As a child he had always been fascinated by hummingbirds. He always hung out feeders and made sure that any place he lived featured trumped shaped flowers to help entice them in. Even when he was in apartments he kept the plants in pots on his balcony and one small feeder filled with the sugary liquid they loved.
In many of the places he lived, he was disappointed. There were no hummingbirds who partook of his offerings. Often it was the squirrel population that loved the sweet liquid he provided. He often wondered if they thought of his feeders as some sort of bar where they could belly up and get a drink. He also wondered if squirrels could get diabetes. He had never been brave enough to ask and when thinking off typing it into the search engine to find out he always hesitated certain that it was not a search he wanted recorded.
But here, there had been some activity. His flowers were visited and the large wooded back yard now featured several feeders. He was certain some of them were drained by squirrels, but he had recently caught movement and set out his wildlife cameras to capture some of the details. He found that these hummingbirds moved faster than he thought and were quite skittish. They seemed lo like his yard and flew all over, but if they spotted him moving then they would flee and he would see no sign of them for at least a week.
The one moving flash seemed to multiply. He wondered if hummingbirds sent out advanced guards to search the area. He had not read of such a thing, but that seemed to be what happened here. One would arrive and then if it seemed safe more would join the first. As he held still more arrived. There seemed to be little zipping dots everywhere. He felt a little dizzy as they zipped past his vision.
It seemed strange to him. He had been studying hummingbirds since he was a child. At no point had he come across anything mentioning them clustered like this. ‘Maybe it is a strange mating ritual and they are only here for this part of the season.’ He reasoned. ‘Maybe this is just a strange breed I have not heard of.’
The thought excited him. It was also one of the reasons he had set up all of the cameras. He mentioned the behavior to a biologist friend of his and it was agreed that it was strange behavior. So he was recoding it and they would go over the details, provided he managed to get any. He knew that the cameras were linked to his computer but he resisted the urge to move and get the laptop. When the camera’s linked then a small light flashed and he didn’t want to risk spooking the hummingbirds with strange lights. So he waited.
Finally there was no more movement in the yard. He took a deep breath and allowed himself to move, eager to see what the cameras captured.
Ten til Midnight 