Despite what people think about island life, I've not been to the beach in over twelve years. I love swimming, yeah, but in clear streams and chlorinated pools. Okay, I love swimming in the sea, too.

     However, after a seaside swim, it takes at least three separate rinse-and-repeat washings of my thick, Douglar locks before I get all the sand out. Plus, contrary to what lighter shade of pale people think, dark people do burn, too, and peel just the same, for days after.

     But my big sis twisted my emotional arm with, "It's baby's first beach day!" The baby in question being my latest great-niece, who  is -- and I know everybody says it, but this time it's so true -- just the most enigmatically special sort of bairn. 

     It was an awfully wonderful outing: waves and hills, trees and fresh, briny air, with the big bounty of sky over all. And my trusty hand-me-down camera phone (cracked screen and all) ate it all up for future blogging fun.

     There I was, trying to figure out how to get my 5' 10'' frame doused by the ankle-height faucet in the make-shift foot-bath, when something whizzed round my head, like I'd been konked in a cartoon.

     Needless to say I ducked, sort of (cause I'm a brave girl raised in "the bush"), thinking it might be one of those beetles of the kind that once flew into a fellah's ear in that same rural village I was born to. I never tired of hearing that particular horror story ... not that I had a choice. 

     What are country dramas made of? Cutlass fights; inter-racial elopements; beloved doggies washed down brown river overflows, and big black beetles with nothing better to do than fly into a poor man's ear and drive him batty.

     Oh man! I reached instinctively for my phone, praying that this time I'd be able to catch one of these hummers with its pants down, so to speak. I never, ever can get them, damn! They move so FAST. Superman ain't got nothing on them.

    I did not have my phone with me. I'd left it behind to save the battery, because the dear sweet old thing doth need recharging fairly regularly. 

     I consoled myself that I'd missed out on snapping hummingbirds before because of their speed, so I probably would not have gotten this guy either.

     I'd never seen a hummer like this one. It was fairly big as they go: maybe the length of my pinky, not counting beak. The colouring was unusual, too. Iridescent as ever, but seemingly in hues of a patriot heading off to support the Soca Warriors in a final football match: namely rubies and darks.

     Then, as if to rub my nose in my delight and chagrin, that wee bird left the shrub and alighted -- get this! -- on the plastic do-not-cross tape marking off the bathrooms under works. And sat there. Not  two feet away. Swaying as the light tape took its non-existent hummer "weight" and danced in the beachy breeze.

     I even went, "Ahhh ..." when the hummingbird spread its wings and held them open as if it needed to balance. Which may be true, seeing that they so seldom stand still they may not have gotten very good at it. (I would eventually learn this held perception to be inaccurate; as hummingbirds in fact perch up to 75 per cent or more of the time)

     "Please. Please. Please. Please," I prayed under my breath; with no idea what I was praying for.

     Just, I was having one of the most amazing encounters with the natural world, and fate had decided my eyes, mind and words would have to suffice to record it and share it with anybody.

     There must be some kind of deeper-meaning message for me in that ... but I sure as heck haven't figured out what it is, yet.

     You've probably realised I love hummingbirds. 

    These magical little winged ones are my Native American Nine Totem Animals Keeper of my Female Side. In Native philosophy hummingbirds represent joy. And beauty. And love.

     So what's there not to love in them. Not a question at all.