A larger bird, one I can’t name, ate our hummingbird’s eggs. Tilly, the hummingbird, has arrived in our garden for three summers. Last summer we watched Billy and Milly hatch and learn to fly.
This summer Tilly returned in May to her tree and promptly built another home. Her partner flew with her until their love affair was consummated and we haven’t seen him since. But Tilly has been a devoted mother and recently rarely left the nest, keeping her eggs warm, except to feed on my husband’s carefully prepared sugar water.
And then it happened in an instant. There was a flurry outside and Tilly turned into a mother bear but to no avail, her swooshing and darting could not match the perpetrating power of someone four times her size. The nest was left lopsided, sticks this way and that, and there was an eerie silence to what we call our natural “magic kingdom.
” This was not the first time she felt threatened. But this time she could not protect her little ones. Last week she had to survive a large beehive just a few feet away.
We know their swarming rattled her, but a beekeeper angel arrived to transport the nest, the honey bees, and their honey to a sweeter home in his magic kingdom. We did buy a pretty blue set of chimes to hang near nature’s ground zero, a melody to honor her loss. Sadly, once again we face power and violence, perpetrators and destruction, grief and loss, and often having no choice but to be on the sidelines watching it all unfold.
As a psychologi.
