Page 18 - The Jewish Voice - June '21

Page 18, The Jewish Voice

arts and entertainment

Book Review:

The Hummingbirds’ Gift: Wonder, Beauty,
And Renewal On Wings

By Nils A. Shapiro
How Does One Describe
Perfection?
I sensed it the moment I
came across this small (5-
1/8” x 7-1/4”), “keepsake”-
size, slender book with its
elegantly designed cover
– a volume so perfectly
suited to its subject: the
jewels of the skies, the
tiniest birds in the world.
And when I
noted the name Sy
Montgomery – the the Western hemisphere, has a total body size that can For centuries, people deemed hummingbird flight pure
a wa rd-wi nni ng measure just over two inches! But in so many ways the magic. Until the invention of the stroboscope, scientists
author of more than hummingbird is a miracle of nature – a fragile, delicate could not understand how hummingbirds hover. With a
30 books, many of creation consisting of a big heart, nine internal air flash duration of one hundred thousandth of a second,
them international pockets, hollow bones, and legs so slender they have been the stroboscope finally revealed the motion of wings that
bestsellers about the described as “thread-like.” had been too fast for other cameras to capture.”
creatures of land, Since the shimmering beauty of many hummingbirds Try for a moment to imagine a wing beat of 60 times
sea and sky with is already legendary, I offer the following brief excerpt per second – over and over again, as the hummingbird
whom we share this planet – I knew that this was one as just one small taste of how much more about these moves from flower to flower all day long, hovering over
I would want to share with my column’s readers. Right mini-marvels of the skies awaits you in these pages: each one as it drinks the nectar with its long beak. The
then and there, I turned to the jacket’s front flap just “Alone among birds, they can hover, fly backward, energy required is enormous, which is why hummingbirds
intending to find out what the book was about ... and, even fly upside down. For such small birds their speed is have large hearts, and why they must feed every 20
before I realized it, standing in place I had read the astonishing ... a male Allen’s hummingbird, for instance, minutes in order to survive.
author’s introduction and a few more pages, and decided can dive out of the sky reaching sixty-one miles per hour, And think about this: There are tiny hummingbirds
that what I had already learned about the remarkable life plunging from fifty feet at a rate of more than sixty feet that migrate from Mexico to Alaska, and that cross the
of hummingbirds was alone worth the price of the book! per second – and pulling out of his plunge, he experiences entire 500-mile span above the Gulf of Mexico in a single
I should have known that, in Montgomery’s hands, more than nine times the force of gravity. Adjusted for flight! Unable to feed at any point across the Gulf, they
there was so much more to treasure here. After all, The body length, the Allen’s is the fastest bird in the world. are near starvation by the end of their flight and must find
Boston Globe refers to Montgomery as “a combination Diving at 385 body lengths per second, this hummer sustenance immediately.
of Indiana Jones and Emily Dickinson,” because of beats the peregrine falcon’s dives at 200 body lengths per Author Sy Montgomery describes how she first became
the beautiful writing style in which she describes her second – and even bests the space shuttle as it screams interested in these unique birds, when she met a dedicated
adventuresome experiences. These include being chased down through the atmosphere at 207 body lengths per woman, Brenda Sherburn La Belle, who is associated with
by a silverback gorilla in Africa; hunted by man-eating second. a California wildlife hospital, WildCare, that has rescued
tigers in India (which was the subject of a National “Hummingbirds’ wings beat at a rate that makes them
Geographic TV documentary); working in a pit with a blur to human eyes, more than sixty times a second. Arts and Entertainment on page 19
8,000 snakes; being undressed by an orangutan in Borneo;
swimming with piranhas, electric eels and dolphins in the
Amazon, visiting with octopuses in the ocean, and more.
Readers of this column will remember reviews of
several of Montgomery’s books, among them: The Soul
of an Octopus (a bestseller in 25 countries); How to Be
a Good Creature; The Magnificent Migration about the
vast wildebeest herds in the Serengeti; and most recently,
Condor Comeback.
Now, she shifts her focus from the condor – the
bird with the largest wingspan in North America – to
one which, among its approximately 240 species in

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