Rufous-tailed Hummingbird. The Lodge at Pico Bonito, Honduras

“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus

On my last morning at the Lodge at Pico Bonito in Honduras, while I waited for the bus to the airport, I spent 3 hours around the Lodge in the rain…mostly shooting from the covered decks and walkways. I made the occasional foray out into the grounds with my umbrella when something worthy presented itself and tempted me to chase it (the Toucans for instance). This Rufous-tailed Hummingbird was using one of the flowers right off the deck at the restaurant for a perch. It was a favorite perch…I saw Rufous-tailed, Crowned Wood-nymth, Jocobin, and Saberwing use it over the course of the three hours. Despite the subdued light, there is a lot to see in this image. You get a bird-in-the-hand view of the feather texture. You can see where the angle of the light catches color from the feathers under the neck, and what they look like when the light is not refracting through them. I love the little drops of water on the head, and the rain streaks caught in the back and foreground. I love the clarity and the liquid perfection of the eye.

The shot has an intimate feeling to it…I think because it captures something shared: a shared attitude. Both the the hummer and I were enduring the rain…making the most of a “bad” situation…or rather transforming a potentially bad situation into a good one by the persistence of a positive attitude. A little rain is not going to stop either of us from doing what needs to be done…and, in my case at least, from doing what I enjoy doing. It would be ungenerous of me to think less of the bird. I suspect, from the look of him, that he was enjoying the morning too. It is a shared moment of enjoyment…in the rain. Intimate.

I would like to think that God looks into my rainy days in the same way…enjoying my enjoyment…sharing an intimate moment. It would be ungenerous of me tho think otherwise of God, don’t you think? And when your eye is generous, God is always the third in any intimate encounter between two creatures. Enjoying the enjoyment! Or that is what I think.

Happy Sunday!