Firefly and Hummingbird Magic

I believe in magic. How could you not, when flickering sparks dot the evening air and tiny helicopters hover above the beebalm? Of course, firefly and hummingbird behaviors have rational explanations. Their magic lies not in science but in how they defy our intuitions of how the natural world works. Knowing my intuition can err doesn’t stop me from gazing in wonder, often for minutes at a stretch.

Now you see it, now you don’t. A spot glows above the grass for a fraction of a second, then another across the way. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it. John Ruskin writes of an evening in Italy, “[T]he fireflies among the scented thickets shone fitfully in the still undarkened air. How they shone! moving like fine-broken starlight through the purple leaves.” Irish poet Frank Ormsby queries “their quick flare of promise and disappointment.” Might they be saying “That any antic spark cruising the void might titillate creation?”
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Hummingbirds share that fleeting quality Emily Dickinson calls evanescence. For every hummingbird I can watch approach or leave a flower, another seems to materialize out of the blue, hover at the bloom, and vanish. Robert Frost delights in the unexpected: “And make us happy in the darting bird / That suddenly above the bees is heard, / The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill, / And off a blossom in mid air stands still.” Joy, surprise, amazement. Magic.

Images: (left) Fireflies in the forest near Nuremberg, Germany, exposure time 30 sec.; (right) Female ruby-throated hummingbird sipping nectar from scarlet beebalm, photographer Joe Schneid, Louisville, Kentucky.