Final festival film is armchair birdwatching
By Will Smith December 5, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Audubon Film Festival
Hooked on Hummingbirds
Tue, Dec 9, 3pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
50 pesos, members free

Have you have ever sat and watched the air ballet of a hummingbird in your garden? That buzzing little jewel-toned blur darting around your flowers is truly a wonder of nature, but they are so quick to dart away. How can an avid birder or even a casual observer get a closer look at one of the most unusual and beautiful of all birds?

Thanks to the last film in the Audubon Film Festival, all you have to do is come to the theater for some of the best close-up, super-slow-motion footage ever obtained of the hummingbird, one of nature’s quickest creatures.

Kenn Kaufman, author of The Lives of North American Birds, has described Hooked on Hummingbirds as “a fantastic film.” This award-winning film, based on a field study by Thomas Kiminski extended over a two-year period in the US and Costa Rica, reveals the secrets of hummingbirds’ acrobatic flight abilities, including the ability to fly upside down, as well as the hummers’ delicate role in nature’s abundance. You will be treated to amazing footage of 20 hummingbird species feeding, building their nests, caring for their young and defending their territories in close-up views unavailable to the naked eye.

Come join Audubon for an hour of armchair birdwatching. The appreciation you will gain from this entertaining and educational film will forever change the way you look at those hummers zipping around your garden.

You may become a member of Audubon for a full year for 300 pesos by joining at the door and pay nothing more for this film or succeeding monthly presentations, and of course bird walks and hikes are free or discounted for members.

Broaden our biophilia look for a gray fox
By Walter L. Meagher; Illustration Dante Escalante

The Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) is a solitary hunter working in the shadows and deep darkness, eating small mammals such as mice, and rabbits as well as insects and fruit.

It has this distinctive feature too: long hooked claws so it can climb trees—to get the fruit and keep out of harm’s way—which dogs and wolves cannot. 

If the Gray Fox seen in El Charco by the night watchman, did not eat fruit (like tunas, fruits of the nopal cacti), which ripen red and fall to the ground in autumn, we who walk there in the daytime would not know that the fox is resident.

Except there is its calling card—scat on a path! After a little rain we might even see its footprints. They too are distinctive. One can even tell a Red Fox from a Gray Fox by scat and footprints alone. So, for visitors at El Charco look for a tail with a black stripe and black tail tip. 

It is a rule of biology that the higher animals rise on the food chain, the less numerous they are compared to organisms lower on the food chain.

This is why fungi and bacteria will endure on the planet longer than Orang-utans; the reason why microbes outnumber Vermilion Flycatchers, which outnumber Gray Foxes.

Humans are an exception to this rule, but foxes are not, and so it is not without surprise that we discover in all of Mexico only one species of fox. The Gray Fox ranges from southern Canada to northern Venezuela and has Mexico to itself; yet this is a nation of ‘megadiversity’, hosting 2,122 kinds of fishes and 2,200 butterflies. Why does one group speciate richly and another not at all?

Of all the mammals that live in El Charco, few are seen. Bats are numerous and diverse. If we see a mouse, we might think it is ‘cute’. Seen or not, we feel closest to the fox.

He has qualities that have made him a part of literature since medieval times; his cunning is often admired or cursed. Cursed or admired, we feel some relatedness to him as well. This is what E.O. Wilson calls our biophilia—love of life and feeling of relatedness to other animals. I believe it is instinctive, part of our genes. To retain the planet as home to plants and animals that live on it, we need ever to find ways to strengthen and broaden our biophilia.

With thanks to Ed Santillana, Historias de un Jardín Botánico.