Birdtober Day 7: Bee Hummingbird

 

 

In Haiti we regularly saw the second smallest bird in the world, the Vervain Hummingbird, which I wrote about here. But this bird, the Bee Hummingbird, is the smallest. It lives in Cuba. How I would love to see it!

 

The video says that a Bee Hummingbird may visit a thousand flowers in a day, so I had to look up how many a honeybee visits. Up to seven thousand! So Bee Hummingbirds are not quite as busy as actual bees. The video also says that these birds can be prey for spiders, but I read elsewhere that they eat spiders too. The circle of life!

 

 

Not quite as busy as a bee,

Bee Hummingbirds buzz busily,

Visiting in a single day

A thousand flowers on their way

For energetic food to eat:

A thousand flowers full of sweet.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

 

 

Birdtober Day 6: Paradise Tanager

 

Paradise Tanager

Canopy forager

For bugs and fruits

Masked in chartreuse

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

Birdtober Day 5: Atlantic Canary

The Atlantic Canary is called on eBird the Island Canary. The bird is named after the Canary Islands and not the other way around. In fact, the Canary Islands are named after dogs, not birds at all (from the Latin canis). Although this is a perfectly sweet-looking yellow bird, it seems positively dull compared with the first four Birdtober birds this year, all of which were very dramatically colored. 

 

Little yellow bird

Eating seeds and twittering

Living island life 

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

 

 

Birdtober Day 4: Gouldian Finch

 

Photo Credit: eBird

 

 

These Australian birds are named after Elizabeth Gould, the wife of the ornithologist who first described them. Some sources call them the Lady Gouldian Finch. Elizabeth Gould was a governess before marriage and a prolific bird illustrator after. She learned lithography from her husband's friend Edward Lear. Her pictures appeared in many of her husband's bird books. When John Gould saw these birds, his wife had recently died of complications after the birth of their eighth child. (You can read more about her and see many of her illustrations here and here and here. I also really appreciated this piece, written by a descendant.) Researching John and Elizabeth Gould, and especially reading the last link, made me think of what I discovered about Eduard Rüppell for this post. Elizabeth Gould has another bird named after her, too, the Mrs. Gould's Sunbird, which lives in the Himalayas.

 

 

 

 

When 

Elizabeth Gould 

died at 37,

she left children,

an ornithologist husband,

piles of delicate, beautiful illustrations,

and two birds: 

the Mrs. Gould's Sunbird 

and the Gouldian Finch.

One drinks nectar

and one eats seeds,

and both are brightly coloured

and called Gouldiae.  

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

Birdtober Day 3: Resplendent Quetzal

 

This video starts with other amazing creatures living in Mexico, but a minute in, we meet the Resplendent Quetzal. All the quetzal species are amazing, but even among quetzals, this one is special. Resplendent, in fact. The video says it's the most beautiful bird in the Americas. The famed ornithologist Alexander Skutch said it was the most beautiful bird he'd ever seen, and he saw many more than I ever will. He was so mesmerized by the Resplendent Quetzal that he lived alone in the highlands of Costa Rica for almost a year just so he could watch its behaviour. (You can read more about Skutch's fascinating life here.) Pablo Neruda compared it, in his Ode to Guatemala, to a "sudden sapphire." I read here that for 200 years, European naturalists thought this bird was a myth, and in the video, it's called "a mythical creature," even as we see footage of it flying through the trees, its ribbon-like tail coverts trailing behind. Birders travel from around the world to see and photograph the Resplendent Quetzal, leading Alan F. Poole to call it a million-dollar bird and to report that farmers are urged to keep their land "quetzal-friendly." I thoroughly enjoyed researching this bird!

 

It's one thing to be a gorgeous bird of legend

Trailing three-foot feathers of iridescent green behind you

As you soar through the cloud forest.

But you, oh Resplendent Quetzal

Take it a step further

As you bring bugs and lizards to your offspring.

Spectacular to look at and a good dad?

Now that's what I call resplendent.  

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey  

 

 

Poetry Friday and Birdtober Day 2: 'I'iwi

 

Scarlet Hawaiian bird

drinks nectar in cool morning

Sings out, "'I'iwi!"

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

 

 

Margaret is hosting Poetry Friday today, so be sure to go visit and see what everyone else is sharing! 

 

Birdtober Day 1: Lilac-breasted Roller and SJT October: The Slow Work of God

 

Today is the first day of Birdtober. It's an event for visual artists, but I've been using the prompts to write daily poems in October for five years now. (All are certified 100% AI-free!) Above you can see 2026's list. And the first bird, the Lilac-breasted Roller, is one I've seen here in Uganda.

 

Strident, squawking,

Rolling, stalking,

Snake devouring,

Colors flowering,

Fearlessly protect their babies 

All while dressed as lovely ladies 

Brown savannas, purple flashes

When lilac-breasted roller passes

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

This month's SJT host, Patricia, shared some words by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin with us. Here's a part of the quote:

 

"Above all, trust in the slow work of God. 

 

...it is the law of all progress

that it is made by passing through some stages of instability --

and that it may take a very long time.

 

And so I think it is with you;

your ideas mature gradually -- let them grow,

let them shape themselves, without undue haste. 

Don't try to force them on, 

as though you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)

will make of you tomorrow."  

She asked us where we are trusting -- or struggling to trust -- the slow work of God. I think it's a difficult question to answer, because sometimes we can only see how the work happened as we look back over years. But when I do that, I see many instances where I spent hours of painful worrying over something that has now gone away completely. I wish I had been able to rest and trust that God was at work, but more often I simply fretted. So I assume there are things in my life now that I am wasting my mental energies over, even if I'm not aware of what they are. 

 

When we work with people (I'm a teacher, working with seventh to eleventh graders this year), we know that very few things happen instantly. If it seems that a change or a realization is instant, chances are there were many steps that went before, even if we don't know what they were. People are not machines, and their development is organic rather than mechanical. As Rob Bell puts it, "Seeds, not switches." We have to trust that the seeds we're planting will bear fruit, even though we probably won't be there to see it. 

Reading Update

Book #82 of 2026 was Some Starry Night, by Irene Latham. I bought this in April, right after it came out, and was so excited to read it. Why did I wait until August to read it? Mostly because I read the borrowed books first, and the ones I actually own get left until later! This is a silly way to read and I need to stop doing it. I loved the book, which imagines that Emily Dickinson, the famously reclusive poet, leaves Amherst and goes to Paris, where she meets Vincent Van Gogh. What an amazing thought this is, and Irene Latham does such a beautiful job of creating their conversations and the moments they spend together. I've read lots of this author's books, but this is the first one she's written for adults. Here's a sample: "She wondered how Vincent would paint the beautiful moments of her life. Her world in Amherst with its enchanted memories -- the summer picnics, the winter afternoons tapping maple trees for sap. Could he put the wet, sweet scent of autumn in a painting? The spring's lacy cherry blossoms?" What a wonderful thought!

 

Book #83 was Restart, by Gordon Korman. Thirteen-year-old Chase falls off the roof and hits his head. When he comes to, he can't remember his life before. But gradually he finds out that he was not the nicest guy. Is this an opportunity to be someone new?

 

Book #84 was a book club pick, The Lumber Baron's Wife, by Lynn Austin. Kate, the woman in the title, has a checkered past and a difficult present. We get to see what her life is like in 1870s Michigan, and we also follow Ashley, a modern-day museum researcher who is trying to figure out what happened to Kate and others around her.

 

Book #85 was 28 Summers, by Elin Hilderbrand. This is a story about a couple who spend one weekend together every year for 28 years.  One is married and the other has a series of relationships, but nothing stands in the way of this yearly rendezvous. While reading about infidelity isn't my favorite, I thought this book was very well done. The characters, even the most minor, were so believable. And the results of this illicit relationship - joy, guilt, stress, family tensions - were so real. Book #86 was a related novella, The Sixth Wedding.

 

Book #87 was Edwidge Danticat's new book, Dèy. I decided to learn from my experience with book #82 (see above), and start reading this one the moment the pre-ordered book popped onto my Kindle. I finished it quickly! I am a completist with Danticat, and I've read all of her books except the one about death (it's on my list but I haven't been able to read it yet). This one is set in Miami, but Haiti is never far from anyone's mind. It's about homes, security, trauma, immigration, and, of course grief (dèy is the Kreyol spelling of the French word deuil, which means mourning). It's also about what it's like to love Haiti and not live there. I recommend it. 

 

Book #88 was Liane Moriarty's Big Little Truths. Like other books by Moriarty, this book is deceptively light-hearted, while dealing with extremely heavy and difficult topics.

 

Book #89 was Gabriel's Moon, by William Boyd. I was drawn in by the African theme, but it wasn't really the main story. This is the first of a projected trilogy and I'm not sure I'll read the rest. There were many disparate elements that never quite came together for me. 

 

Book #90 was The One Day You Were My Husband, by Rosie Walsh. I really enjoyed this at first, but the twistiness took it to places I didn't like. 

 

Book #91 was Wild America, by Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher. I really loved this book. I have the updated version by Scott Weidensaul, but I wanted to read the original first. It's the story of a 30,000 mile trip across North America in 1953. Two highly knowledgeable naturalists and ornithologists comment on everything they see. I did a lot of Googling to see what has changed in the 73 years since this trip, and now I'm excited to read Weidensaul's book Return to Wild America. 

 

Book #92 was a book club pick, When We Meet Again, by Kristin Harmel. This is the fourth Harmel book we've read together. It wasn't my favorite (that would probably be The Book of Lost Names), but we enjoyed it and it's always great to talk about these things with my book club.