This morning I watched the hummers on
the patio. If the weather is good, if the yellow jackets don't chase
me away, I sit in the chair under the slatted patio cover and watch
them zoom around five feeders. From this direction I can see the
garden, the orange groves and the sun rising behind the hills across
the road. I have been facing this direction since just after Labor
Day.
I laughed at the hummers sweet little
brown heads bobbing at the feeders, but the desire to see their
brilliant colors made me move to the other side of the patio and face
the house. Now I saw that one bobbing head was brown, now ruby red,
now brown, now ruby red. Several other hummers were flashing
iridescent green.
A hummingbird's coloring comes from
refracted light. This is the explanation from All About Birds website
“Adding to the diversity of avian colors are colors
produced by the structure of the feather. The best known
example is the gorget (throat feathers) of many hummingbird
species. The iridescent colors of the gorget are the result of
the refraction of incident light caused by the microscopic
structure of the feathers. The refraction works like a prism,
splitting the light into rich, component colors. At certain
angles little or no light is reflected back to the viewer and
the gorget can appear black. As the viewing angle changes, the
refracted light becomes visible in a glowing, shimmering
iridescent display.”
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| Photo courtesy of http://stevetaboneblog.com |
I sat still for several moments before
the difference between reflected and refracted light dropped into my
heart.
Reflected light is all about me. Lower
case me, ego me. Reflected light begs questions such as why did a
hummer pee on my forehead as soon as I moved to the other side of the
patio? Why did a bee get tangled in my hair and sting me on the side
of the head? (The right side.) Why is it too blowy for me to journal
outside comfortably?
Refracted light has to do with Big Me,
soul Me. The Me I glimpse as I disappear into a line of writing or a
flash of hummingbird.
Thanks to my hummingbird reminders, the
question of the day is: how can I allow my refracted light to shine?
What makes your light shine???
