Subject: [Tweeters] Hummingbird Birth Defect
Date: Oct 9 08:36:01 2005
From: Janeanne Houston - janeannesoprano at comcast.net


Hello Tweets,
We have a young male Anna's Hummingbird who took up residence in our West
Seattle neighborhood shortly after fledging last spring. This daily visitor
has a most unusual birth defect (we assume!) in that his tongue extends
beyond the tip of his bill about an inch or more. At first, I thought it was
a teenager sort of thing, and that the bill would grow to cover it as he
matured, but he is beginning to exhibit adult male plumage, and the bill is
still far shorter than the tongue. It is an odd look, tongue flapping in
the breeze, if you will, but he was certainly flycatching with ease this
morning, and has become a resident "terrorist." The other birds seem to
notice that he is "different."
Has anyone seen this particular birth defect before, and what do you experts
feel his chances for survival are? Unable to help ourselves, we call him
"The Tongue."

Janeanne Houston
www.elmgroveproductions.com
www.northwestartists.org
houstojc at plu.edu
janeannesoprano at comcast.net
This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more
beautifully, more devotedly than ever before- Leonard Bernstein, 1963