The f in difference...

Ok, so it turns out I am more than capable of embarrassing myself in a range of languages. We´ve had French, Welsh and (of course) English and now, it seems I have expanded my repertoire from ´cul´ ´eirin gwlanog´ and incidents in English which are too numerous to list, to the Spanish language.

Who´d have thought that the Spanish word cansada (tired) would be one n up from casada (married)? So yesterday, when someone asked me how I was, I told them I was married because I couldn´t get to bed. (!)

Not as good as earlier in the week when I confessed to being pregnant. I couldn´t understand why people were fussing around me until someone explained that I was trying to say ´embarrassed´. Again, I´d managed to drop a letter here or there.

Never a dull moment, hey?

Apparently it is also not adviseable to say ´look, he inserts his beak into the flower´ in Spanish when one is in polite company, even if there is a humming bird in front of you, which is clearly demonstrating specified action. Apparently the words inserting / beak / flower should not be strung together in a sentence. Can´t think why.

So, while I am out here entertaining some of Panama and two Americans I hope you are all minding your ps and qs....

This morning, in the rainforest (and EVERYWHERE else) it was raining, you know the kind of drop that -if it doesn´t get you on the way down - will get you on its forceful rebound off the pavement? I was supposed to be going for a walk with Tilcia but it was too wet so she had a lie in and I sat on the patio.

I have, seriously, fallen in love.
With hummingbirds.

There is one which feeds in Tilcia´s garden, it has a little routine:
1. Disappear for 20 minutes.
2. Sit somewhere safe, eyeing up the flower of your choice.
3. Do a fly by which is almost invisible to the naked eye (just looks like an insect type blur).
4. Approach flower.
5. Hover, feed.
6. Sit, digest.

And I got to watch it the whole time it rained. Beautiful.
After a bit of practice I managed to get a couple of pictures (no software on computer to enable zooming).

Feeding

Digesting.

I was actually wondering about the calorific value of nectar. I mean, there is a lot of flapping activity per large slurp. I was thinking of writing to the National Hummingbird Society (NHS?) to suggest they stop flapping while they eat, but you know what these large organisations are like...word rarely gets down to the little man.

There were other lovely birds in the garden but I couldn´t draw my eyes (or lens) away.

In a shocking discovery (!) there are parrots in the garden but I couldn´t tell because they are brown. Go figure, as my fellow students would say. They just look like big, scruffy thrush.I could barely tell the difference.

A word in which there is, dear reader, more than one f.