I have had many experiences with the hummingbird! Firstly, this tiny creature weighing less than 14 grams with a brain that cannot be more than a few grams, is representative of the genius of the species. Each year this colourful winged delight must travel 1500 miles (2400+ km) from the Yucatan peninsula two times! In spring he flies to the U.S. and in the late fall, well before a freeze, he must make the journey again or risk freezing to death.

When he arrives in the spring for his yearly visit he goes exactly to the place where his feeder was last year. I take the feeders in to clean them and then put them out when he comes. However, if the feeder is not out he then comes to the kitchen window and buzzes me to tell me to prepare his food, four parts water and one part sugar, in a red feeder, the colour that attracts hummingbirds.

Once in Colorado we camped near a pristine stream and campers had put up many hummingbird feeders which were providing food for a host of visitors. We witnessed a humorous incident when a fishing pole with a red float was left outside our tent and the hummingbirds continually went to it, unable to find any nectar. Hummingbirds are strongly territorial though and the first one to arrive will chase the others away though they await their opportunity when the leader is resting and fly quickly to the feeder and insert their long tongues drinking as much as possible.

In my uncle's home in California hummingbirds were almost tame because there were so many hibiscus in bloom throughout the year, and hummingbirds love hibiscus. One day my uncle decided to catch one since they would continue feasting on the flowers even when humans passed by. He gently caught one in his hand and to his shock and amazement, the little creature spun around and drilled though his hand!

The last story I have about the hummingbird is one that bird lovers knew long before I discovered it.
One day I was watering the garden and adjusted the nozzle to a fine spray. immediately a hummingbird came and began dancing in the spray, a dance of grace and beauty and delight. It was an experience I shall never forget.

Here are some passages in Savitri where Sri Aurobindo mentions birds :

As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,
Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,
And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,
In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose
One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,
Recover the lost habit of happiness,
Feel her bright nature’s glorious ambiance,
And preen joy in her warmth and colour’s rule. ||3.36||

Almost they saw who lived within her light
Her playmate in the sempiternal spheres
Descended from its unattainable realms
In her attracting advent’s luminous wake,
The white-fire dragon bird of endless bliss
Drifting with burning wings above her days:
Heaven’s tranquil shield guarded the missioned child. ||4.5||

In rooms of the young divinity of power
And early play of the eternal Child
The embodiments of his outwinging thoughts
Laved in a bright everlasting wonder’s tints
And lulled by whispers of that lucid air
Take dream-hued rest like birds on timeless trees
Before they dive to float on earth-time’s sea. ||28.12||

The voice of time sang of the Immortal’s joy;
An inspiration and a lyric cry,
The moments came with ecstasy on their wings;
Beauty unimaginable moved heaven-bare
Absolved from boundaries in the vasts of dream;
The cry of the Birds of Wonder called from the skies
To the deathless people of the shores of Light. ||35.12||

When life broke through its half-drowse in the plant
That feels and suffers but cannot move or cry,
In beast and in winged bird and thinking man
It made of the heart’s rhythm its music’s beat;
It forced the unconscious tissues to awake
And ask for happiness and earn the pang
And thrill with pleasure and laughter of brief delight,
And quiver with pain and crave for ecstasy. ||40.15||

Then came the pressure of a seeing Power
That drew all into a dancing turbid mass
Circling around a single luminous point,
Centre of reference in a conscious field,
Figure of a unitary Light within. ||42.12||

It lit the impulse of the half-sentient flood,
Even an illusion gave of fixity
As if a sea could serve as a firm soil. ||42.13||

That strange observing Power imposed its sight. ||42.14||

It forced on flux a limit and a shape,
It gave its stream a lower narrow bank,
Drew lines to snare the spirit’s formlessness. ||42.15||

It fashioned the life-mind of bird and beast,
The answer of the reptile and the fish,
The primitive pattern of the thoughts of man. ||42.16||

A hunter of spiritual verities
Still only thought or guessed or held by faith,
It seized in imagination and confined
A painted bird of paradise in a cage. ||50.29||

Immutable in rhythmic calm and joy
He saw, sovereignly free in limitless light,
The unfallen planes, the thought-created worlds
Where Knowledge is the leader of the act
And Matter is of thinking substance made,
Feeling, a heaven-bird poised on dreaming wings,
Answers Truth’s call as to a parent’s voice,
Form luminous leaps from the all-shaping beam
And Will is a conscious chariot of the Gods,
And Life, a splendour-stream of musing Force,
Carries the voices of the mystic Suns. ||70.32||

There was no gulf between the thought and fact;
Ever they replied like bird to calling bird;
The will obeyed the thought, the act the will,
There was a harmony woven twixt soul and soul. ||86.15||

As needing nothing but its own rapt flight
Her nature dwelt in a strong separate air
Like a strange bird with large rich-coloured breast
That sojourns on a secret fruited bough
Lost in the emerald glory of the woods
Or flies above divine unreachable tops. ||94.21||