Farmer's Caledar - August 2008

'Sometime around the middle of this month, the hummingbirds will have departed, and, once again, I won't know it. At this place last year we had a pair. They turned up in mid-May, poised on blurred, invisible wings before the first garden flowers, dipping and sipping fastidiously at the red plastic hummingbird feeder at the window, zooming away. They loved the bee palm best, and the phlox, but they also loved the brightly colored feeder, Which I kept filled with a sugar-water solution. It holds about a cup. Early in the summer the little birds were at the feeder constantly, emptying the reservoir in a single day. By early August, their visits had dropped off, and I filled the feeder only every three to four days. Perhaps the pair was in training as the time of their southern migration approached. The frail and tiny hummingbird is among the hardiest of birds. It's a marathoner, an epic migrator, making its way from New England to Central America.

'That's a long haul, and it takes a long time. Thus, the hummingbirds get an early start. By mid-August, I realized that our pair was gone, the feeder unvisited. I wondered exactly when they had taken off and where they were when I missed them. That happens every year: I wait for the hummingbirds to decamp, but the event remains unrecorded. It's hard to watch for an absence.'