Through the Hummingbird's Eye: A Neurosparkle Manifesto

An adult message disguised as a children's storybook.

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Not a metaphor. A bird I watched.

The hummingbird in this book is real. She is one leucistic female ruby-throated hummingbird who came to my feeders the year I was caregiving for my parents in Georgia, before I moved them to Quincy.

Leucistic means she carried less pigment than the others. To my eyes she looked different. To the other birds she did not. They did not sort her the way people sort each other. She fed. She held her territory. She would make the solo Gulf crossing that every ruby-throated female makes without ever being taught the route. She was different in the way I could see, and entirely herself in every way that mattered to the birds.

I did not turn her into a symbol. I wrote down what she did. The book imagines the conversation the birds might have about the things we get wrong about a bird who looks unlike the rest. The owl. The eagle. The parrots. The ones I watch from our home in Quincy and from Orquidea del Sur, our yearly place in Nicaragua.

Every fact in it is a real fact. The ornithology is true. I changed nothing about the birds to make the point. The point was already there.

She was never the metaphor. She was the bird. The story is about being different and being whole at the same time, which is the only thing I have ever been writing about.

From the Book

Where the hummingbird leads next.

Take the Hummingbird Home