Think about the world our children and grandchildren will inherit. Look at the hummingbird, the most unlikely of creatures, with its long, pointy beak for sipping nectar, its iridescent belly, its tiny nest made of spider silk perched high in a tree. We need the winds over the gulf to blow gently. We need temperatures in the winter to stay cold so the birds don’t migrate too soon. We need the flowers in our gardens to thrive. And we need clean water to fall from the skies.

To contribute your observations to the existing data on hummingbirds, you can contact Audubon’s hummingbird project at www.hummingbirdsathome.org.

Copyright © 2014 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.