When I pulled up into my drive this afternoon, I was able to confirm something I'd suspected for a while:

Hummingbirds have found my Turk's Cap hibiscus. I had periodically seen shadows swoop up into the leaves of the pecan tree when I opened the door of my house to step outside - shadows too big for a bee, and kind of too solid even for a hummingbird moth.

But when I pulled in the drive today, there was a hummingbird feeding from the plant. I'm pretty sure it was a female ruby-throat - her plumage was pretty worn (but that's to be expected this time of year). It was a neat thing to see and hopefully those plants are helping to sustain the hummers. (I've thought of getting a feeder, but honestly, the level of commitment to keeping it clean is large enough that I often think, "You'd be just as well off getting a housepet if you want that kind of effort.") Besides, I'd rather have plants that feed them.

Spent the afternoon doing fieldwork. This is a re-start of the prairie restoration project that kind of fizzled out a couple years ago (mainly because we couldn't get the grazing treatment set up the way we wanted). It was about the perfect day for fieldwork - low 80s, no humidity, the sun was out but there were enough clouds passing by to give relief, slight breeze. Unfortunately, none of the students who had "promised" to show up (even with the carrot of extra credit points) did, so I was by myself. But that was okay. It's actually pretty peaceful doing fieldwork alone; I don't have to give directions to anyone, or run over and identify some mystery plant, or tell someone how to spell the name on something. (And this "field" is on land a colleague owns, not far from his house - so some of the solo-fieldwork worries I sometimes have aren't an issue: it's private property so creepy people are unlikely to be hanging out there, and if they are, I can be kind of big and blustery and ask them if they have the landowner's permission to be there. And even if something bad happened - like I stepped in a hole or something - when my colleague or his wife came home, they'd see my car still there and wonder what was up).

So it was pleasant. I did half of the sampling because some of the students wanting extra credit were only able to go out on Friday, so I figured if I could do half of the sampling alone in just over 2 hours, if I have a couple teams of people, we can finish the other half about as fast. Or even if they don't materialize, it's supposed to be nice again tomorrow so it will be another pleasant day to work outside.

I forget how peaceful fieldwork is. It takes you away from all the stuff - all the demanding people, all the low rumble of bad news, the stacks of papers needing to be graded. It's very immediate: you are doing this NOW, and you can't worry about anything else you need to be doing, because you are doing this. And I'm good at identifying plants, there's some satisfaction in that, in being able to see something again that I only briefly saw a couple years ago on the same site and remember what it is.

In its own way it's a bit like knitting or quilting - something you give a good part of your attention to, but it's a restful sort of attention - it's not the frantic working-with-one-eye-on-the-clock that comes with grading papers between classes, or the rolling-eye, heavy-teenagerish-sigh that comes when you have to take lots of work home with you.