Humming the day away

The tomatoes continue to ripen, and we continue to pick them for processing into ketchup at a plant in Poughkeepsie. Sitting in front of the plum tomato plants the other day, concentrating on finding red ones and avoiding the rotting ones that would explode in my hand as I picked them, I remained vaguely aware of the low humming of bees happily flitting from flower to flower. I’ve gotten used to the bees now and have stopped jerking my hand away every time one comes near. Drunk on nectar (or something), they seem to have judged us neither dangerous nor interesting and generally leave us to ourselves to pull fruit.

Vaguely aware of the distant roar of Bob’s tractor, the hot sun on my back, and the fact that lunchtime was quickly approaching, I suddenly realized that the “hummm” I was now hearing was much louder than the bees’ understated buzzing. It sounded more like an engine. Looking up, I half expected to see a small plane flying across the morning sky. Instead, I found myself staring straight into the black eyes of a tiny hummingbird.












Tomatoes, tractor, sun, and lunch all forgotten, I could only stare as the bird remained suspended above me, beating her tiny wings into a blur of motion that it’s hard to believe exists in nature. It only took a second; I had just enough time to take in her tiny, gray, perfect little body, the curved beak—and then she was gone.

Such fleeting, up-close glimpses are an integral part of the organic farm experience. One of the more disturbing aspects of industrial agriculture is that pesticides, herbicides, and other inputs have left the environment of most factory farms unable to sustain any life aside from the crops that are growing there—no bugs in the soil, and no birds flying overhead, all victims of the chemicals that are considered essential for our food to grow. (For an example of recent stories about pesticide-related songbird die-offs, see here.) Ironic that much of the food that sustains us is actually grown in a dead zone.

But organic farms, with their healthy soils and plants, provide food and shelter for a number of animals (including bugs) that then return the favor by preying on pests, pollinating the flowers on some vegetable plants (including tomatoes), providing other useful services, and sometimes ignoring us and the farm completely. I frequently look up from work to see turkey vultures soaring overhead, or the comical site of large crows being chased by small killdeer birds. (Why they would do this is unclear to me, but they seem to enjoy it and I’ve never seen a crow turn on them and take advantage of its superior size to silence the yippers once and for all. Maybe crows are more patient that I am.)

Hummingbirds often buzz around flowers that contain nectar for them to drink, and tomato plants certainly don’t provide that. But I found some information on another gardening site that suggested that they’re attracted to the color red. There was also some speculation that hummingbirds will hang around tomato plants in order to eat fruit flies and other insects feeding on any damaged fruit. (Thanks to the tomato hornworms, we’ve still got lots of that.)

After some research, I figured that the one I saw must have been a ruby-throated hummingbird, since that’s the only North American species that regularly nests east of the Mississippi. Since it didn’t have a ruby throat, though, it must have been a female, which, like females in most species other than humans, is the less ostentatiously adorned member of the couple. Here's a picture of one, courtesy of wikipedia: