Nature Watch

Bird Watch:
If you attach a hummingbird feeder to your kitchen window, and then wrap little tiny twigs around it, you can watch hummingbirds up close and very personal when they stop for a drink and a rest. (They really like the little tiny twigs.) You have to hold very still when one alights, though, because they can see you just as easily as you can see them, and they aren't as fascinated in watching you wash the dirty pan as you are in seeing them at rest. They fly away. But freeze, and watch the hummingbirds drink and pause, drink and pause, and you will notice that they stick their little tongues out after a long sip, as if they are judging the bouquet of the red stuff: sip-sip-sip-sip! A hummingbird tongue looks like a string. The first time I saw one, I thought is WAS a string, stuck on the hummingbird's beak.

If I sneak outside, I can sit and hear them chirp and tweak at each other. They sit out on the trumpet vine and jasmine, and if you have a good eye, you can see them overhead in the big trees.

Caveat lector: Cooking dinner is sometimes slow-going in my kitchen. Factor in that on a heavily-trafficked hummingbird evening, I might freeze at the kitchen window for 45 seconds or more, every few minutes, just to see the different types and colors of birds that stop by. And to watch them vie for the twigs.

Bug Watch:

Praying mantises. I lOVE these guys. I am aware that the term "praying" is colloquial, (although I think that everyone calls them that, so how colloquial is that, I ask?) If we all had our PhDs in entomology we might delete the "praying" adjective, but then we would miss out on some language enrichment as well.

Last week that Spouse o' Mine brought a big, brown praying mantis into the house. "Oh!" I said. "Let's put him on the diffenbachia while we're gone this weekend and see if he will eat aphids!" I didn't even know if we had aphids, but opportunity was a knockin' on our door. So he set the mantis down, and our geriatric, million-year-old kitty promptly jumped up and pounced on it. Great scott, this cat never moves for hours or days on end; what triggered this erratic behavior?! We saved the mantis, placed it high in the plant corner, and left for the weekend. Upon our return, Mr. Mantis was still in the room, but on the other side from where we left him. I caught and released him, mentally thanking him for his services.

Tonight I spied a little green green green praying mantis on the lilac bush outside. I picked him up - he was only an inch or so long and showed him to that Spouse o' Mine, who was sitting on the chicken house roof. (That is another blog for another day...) Then I moved the mantis over to the cosmos garden to observe his activity. It was not altogether a simple task, to watch the little mantis allthewhile hearing that Spouse o' Mine yelling from the rafters of the chicken house about grabbing a 2x4 and holding the plywood sheet high above my 5'2" body (...oh, wait, that, too, is another blog for another day.)

When I got back to my task of mantis watch, I got to see him with part of an ant or an aphid in his mouth - and he was chewing!! Then he took the other half, which he was holding in his tibia or his tarsus, (his hand!), and put it in his mouth!! I snapped the cosmos stem and carried it (and the mantis) in to show the Boy. We watched the mantis move its head - some mantises can move their heads 300 degrees, and they have a good range of vision, with binocular vision and compound eyes. Mantises are so prehistoric-looking. George Lucas and his cohorts must have studied them before they set out to make their Star War movies. I love praying mantises. After watching the little mantis for a bit, I released him, too - out onto the cosmos again.

Stargazing:
The Perseid Meteor Showers! One of my favorite annual events.

Back in my youthful days of flight attending, I was once working a flight across the Atlantic, in a 747. Those planes were my favorites to work on, and I usually bid for the Upper Deck - 16 business class passengers and the cockpit. Some flight attendants did not like the UD, did not like working so closely w/ the cockpit crew, but I really had a lot of fun with the pilots and this was my first choice of work stations, which could last for 5 hours (JFK-London) to 17 hours (JFK-Athens).

On the trans-Atlantic flights, one might imagine in one's mind's eye, flying straight east from JFK (New York) across the deep blue sea, holding at 40 degrees North latitude. But this is inaccurate; commercial airlines fly from JFK up to Greenland, over to Iceland, then down to Scotland, England, Germany, wherever. Why do they do this? Less time spent over the deep blue sea means more time in airspace near or over land, should one decide that one needs land on which to land.

Most of TWA's int'l flights took off in the early evening from JFK, flew all night and landed at their European/Middle Eastern destinations bright & early the following morning. As these flights passed landfall of Greenland and Iceland, the night sky over the ocean at 43,000' was as dark as dark could be.

One night, after we had completed the 5-course dinner service, (yes, those were the days, weren't they? - before peanuts and such), and just past Iceland, the captain came on and said, "Folks, there's a meteor shower going on tonight, so I am going to dim the cabin lights so you can look out and enjoy the site." WELL! I finished whatever it was I was doing, and made a beeline for the cockpit! I knew two things: The night sky was going to be dark as pitch, and I knew that the cockpit flew with no lights on during the night portion of their flights.

I grabbed one of the empty jumpseats up front, and spent the next half hour or so, watching the most amazing show of meteors I will ever hope to witness. They were zipping, one, maybe two, every minute. Incredible.

I still startle when I see a falling star. Out here in rural Kansas we get to witness them fairly often. And it will never, ever cease to thrill me.