The Hummingbirds’ Gift: Wonder, Beauty, and Renewal on Wings
By Sy Montgomery
(83 pages, nonfiction, 2021)
New Hampshire Author Sy Montgomery goes to California to help bird rescuer Brenda Sherburn LaBelle raise two tiny baby hummingbirds. Brenda is a bird rehabilitator and she is an expert at hummingbird rescue and care. She’s planted a hummingbird garden around their California home and she gets calls from all over about how to care for hummingbirds. The two babies are really tiny – the size of peanuts! Brenda and Sy have to use magnifying glasses to get a good look at them. The babies must be fed fruit flies by hand every twenty minutes during the day. Everything in Brenda and Sy’s life revolves around feeding these tiny creatures every twenty minutes. They are afraid to name them at first in case the babies don’t make it, but eventually, Sy suggests the names of Maya and Zuni. The babies have some setbacks – they have mites. And removing the mites is traumatic for everyone. This is a small book, but it is filled with information about hummingbirds, and it has some beautiful photos. I was impressed with the dedication and determination of all those who work to rehabilitate a hummingbird, “a breathing gem.” Sy Montgomery writes, “though tiny and fragile, hummingbirds, like no other birds, own the sky.”
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Robbin Bailey
