We all love the sight of a flashing hummingbird as it flits from flower to flower in our gardens. The sound of hummingbirds is one of the most pleasurable sounds to our ears.  It means a very much alive thing is paying us a visit.

            Although it is hardly as big as our thumb it accomplishes many amazing things. For instance it can be flying forward at sixty miles an hour and in less than the blink of your eye it can stop and go backwards at the same rate of speed, then it can rise straight up in the air without missing a beat. Up, down, forward, backwards, sideways, it doesn’t matter and if the wind should be blowing it does not cause even the slightest waver in the hummingbird’s path.

            Aside from its amazing flight accomplishments perhaps its most remarkable feat is its migration flight all the way down to the very tip of the Andes Mountains in Chile during our winter and its flight back in the spring, a distance of several thousand miles.

            One cannot estimate the sheer joy this tiny miracle brings to so many along its path of migration. The hummingbird is truly another treat for us living within the mountain shadows.