Whoops! Wrong again. I just googled and got...Birds! With beaks and feathers. Shining, gleaming rainbow coloured feathers. Gentle Reader, let me treat you to a few photos, as well as some images of my paintings:
These birds are not hummingbirds, neither are they even remotely related to hummingbirds, except that they have feathers and hatch out of eggs. Africa and tropical Asian regions needed a counterpart to the hummingbird in order to pollinate some of their outrageously gorgeous flowers.
The hummingbirds didn't want to do it because they were all living in South America where the nectar tastes better and the rent is cheaper. They also didn't want to make that flight all the way across the Atlantic and I won't go into here their contractual obligations....
So God, or Ma Nature, or if you want to use any of the scientists' names for God, Evolution or Natural Selection determined that Africa and Asia could also have beautiful long billed little birds with jewel-like plumage to service their flowers. The only deal was they couldn't fly fancy. The hummingbirds already had the trademark and no one wanted to see this in court.
There is no denying that sunbirds are equal to hummingbirds for their iridescent splendour.
I often visualize them suspended from a vertical twig or flower stem in the blazing tropical sun as it is just beginning to rise, holding still as they shine like jewels in the silent light of the new day.
These last two images are of purple-breasted sunbirds, native to Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. It is hard to imagine such delicate, exquisite and innocent splendour set amid the horrors of genocide, war, institutionalized homophobia and brutality.
If only we could be reminded of the delicate, fragile beauty of the world around us, and so learn to emulate that splendour in how we treat one another and the other beings we share the planet with.
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