...more recent posts
September 1, 2003
Holding Pattern
...still hovering...but that’s the nature of hovering: to continue, in the same place; position suspended in passing time; standing still and moving all at once...
hovering...
still...
August is gone, a month without a single Holiday, but now it’s September, and Labor Day. For me, the celebration rings ironic, as I’m on indefinite holiday...
...hovering...
Being out of work, I’ve had as much time as I could want for birdwatching.
Hovering around the Park as fall migration begins in earnest, I’ve been watching a couple of avian hover-artists lately. Vertebrate flight is amazing in and of itself, but hovering is a special case, and requires another level of effort. Most birds can accomplish it only briefly. Many songbirds practice what’s known as hover-gleaning, a momentary “pause” in a short flight to pick off a berry or an insect from the tip of a twig. These are typically small, flighty birds, and the behavior manifests as a natural facet of their buoyant flight style. More unexpected is the hovering of the Belted Kingfisher.
The Kingfisher is a curiously proportioned bird, over a foot long, with much of that size concentrated in its large, crested head and long bill. The top-heavy bird looks rather ungainly flying with its rowing wingbeats, but the shocking thing is to see it stop in mid air and hover laboriously over the waters of the Pool. The tension of the unlikely scene is only broken when it spies a fish or frog, or some invertebrate. Then, of a sudden, the bird folds its wings and plunges straight down, head first into the water, like a living harpoon, to nab its unsuspecting prey.
If the Kingfisher seems an improbable hoverer, it’s in comparison to the Ruby-throated Hummingbird, which epitomizes the art. Hovering is at the heart of the Hummingbirds’ lifestyle. Their wings pump so fast they blur towards invisibility, such that the birds appear to hang in the air without any labor at all, even though they must actually work at a very high metabolic rate in order to stay aloft.
Hummingbirds are just plain preternatural. Their flight is so specialized that it seems more like an insect’s than a bird’s. They hover before flowers, cruising through the Touch-me-nots along the Loch, probing for nectar with their long, thin bills. Then they zip off on a beeline, changing direction instantaneously. And they are able to move in any direction, up, down, even backwards, at will. With their miraculous powers of flight, and jewel-like, iridescent colors, Hummingbirds appear all but magical. Like fairies, they are ever found among flowers, tiny beings suspended in a thrumming dream of unfolding blooms and flowing nectar...
Or so it seems to a lazy viewer on holiday at the end of Summer...
...hovering...
I suppose even the magic of the Hummingbird is an illusion, the evanescent image of hard work. For me, a new direction is less easily achieved. The clumsy Kingfisher rattling from its perch is closer to my method.
But I’ve been working for years, and I thought I’d take a little time off before diving back in...
Hovering can’t go on forever, can it?