The psalm of the white hummingbird
An angel appears in Des Plaines.
“The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature,” 1849
Most of us are delighted seeing even a single Ruby-throated Hummingbird in typical plumage. So it’s hard to articulate how special an all-white one is. There have been perhaps only three or four seen in the Midwest in the past two decades.
That’s the thing about nature—you think something is impossible, and then it happens right in front of you.
That was the case in a quarter-acre garden in the leafy Chicago suburb of Des Plaines last year. Most of us will bird our entire lives and never experience what Jenna Temple and her mom did, when a tiny white bird zipped into their yard, attracted to its mature trees, potted annuals, and native perennials. Jenna observed the unusual hummingbird from her bedroom window and quickly took some photos and video. She and her family had experienced the loss of two family members in the preceding months. They concluded that the ivory birdlet looked like a little angel.
What’s particularly remarkable is that a hummingbird feeder wasn’t part of the attraction to this backyard garden setting, one with minimal lawn, laden with leaf mulch, logs, rock/branch piles—and no pesticides or herbicides. Leucy was specifically feeding on black and blue salvia, the red-flowered pineapple sage, and shrimp plant at that time; all full in bloom during the first week of October.
Leucy, so-dubbed because of her leucistic plumage, stayed around for several days, enough time to share the sighting with friends and family. Sometimes she fed and other times she rested on a nearby elm or tulip tree branch or wire.
As in the above Emerson quote, “No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty.” So goes any explanation as to why an all-white hummingbird is so special. It’s just that the most chance and fleeting encounters are the ones that linger the longest.
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