Heroes Not Zombies

I had never even heard of a hummingbird moth before I came to live here in the Charente. I’d never heard of a hoopoe bird either.

Look at them – aren’t they amongst the most unusual creatures you’ve ever seen?

You know the hummingbird moth is around from the noise of its wings. They emit a deep, bass, tone, quite unlike that of any other flying insects. They love the buddleia plants, just as the butterflies do. I love to watch them hover in front of the plant, and slip that long, skinny proboscis down into each flower to drink up the nectar. They make their way from tiny flower to flower. I can’t imagine just how little nectar they must get from each single flower, but they just keep going, making their way, their special, apparently totally random way, from flower to flower, and bush to bush.

You know the hoopoe is around from its distinctive call – which sounds like, well, you guessed it, “hoo-po, hoo-po”. I think when I first heard it I thought it was perhaps a cuckoo or a dove, but I’ve learned, now, to recognise it as the hoopoe. Isn’t he the most unusual shape? With that long, long beak, he runs around across the grass, stopping to drill down into the soil and come up with a grub, or a worm. I have absolutely no idea how he does that. The movements, like those of the hummingbird moth, seem completely random. Yet, time and again, he comes up with food. Can he hear what’s going on under the soil? Can he smell his prey? Does he detect movement beneath his feet? I really don’t know, but I love to watch him. Once the chicks are born, you can see them follow a parent around as the search for food. The little ones drill down again and again and rarely seem to come up with anything to eat. Their parents feed them at first. Then one day they’ll turn up by themselves and sometimes I’ve thought, oh no, this little bird is never going to find any food, but they keep at it, running this way and that and stopping to peck, apparently randomly. Then after a while, they crack it, and come up trumps as often as their parents do.

These are two creatures which were so strange to me, and, in fact, I still find them exceptionally strange, but they’ve become familiar to me. I look forward to the first one of the season arriving in the garden, and I never tire of watching how they live.

Isn’t it strange how the unfamiliar can become familiar, without losing its distinctive uniqueness?
That’s what these photos make me think. How every day is unique, how every person is unique, how every living creature is unique. And what delight that brings me.