All Aboard the Hummingbird Express.

The other night at work I was leaning over to give some grape juice to one of our patients, and became entangled in one of the windchimes hanging over her bed. "This reminds me of my porch," I said,"You have everything but a hummingbird feeder hanging here".

"It's time to take your feeder down", the woman chided me. " If you leave it up the hummingbirds will miss their ride-".


I knew there would be no reasoning with this woman, who believed her mother, and her country aunts, and her grandmother. Who believed hummingbirds rode south on the backs of bigger birds. People believe in all kinds of things- whimsical, fantastic, and magical. Elves. Fairies. Santa Claus. And Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, headed out over the Gulf en route to the Tropics, tucked under a tanager's wings.