A small garden emerges in the midst of a jungle of concrete in Iztapalapa, south of Mexico City. Between concrete structures, a solitary tree gives the welcome to the Institute of Higher secondary Education of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). There, overlooking the smallest bird on the planet by beating its wings 200 times per second. Remains suspended in the air, fly backwards, like no other, and inserts its beak in a red mirto, [a bush with berries] to extract the nectar that every day is more difficult to get in the city.

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The bird that help the plants to have sex in Praise of the hummingbird

White Prado is a professor of Biology at the centre. As the task of sensitizing the students about environmental issues in one of the areas most savagely urbanized of the city is complicated, he decided to create a garden with flowers to attract hummingbirds. A small space with a fountain and a few flower boxes in which they grow myrtle, lavender and aretillos.

“to Talk of issues of a kind not achieved that students are aware of them. But when they are close to the hummingbird and this shines through with all of its colors, the traps and there is no other: the caring,” says Prado from its particular oasis. Since it began in 2016, other teachers have been encouraged to take their classes in the classroom and now are also taught there, drawing and “hummingbird-therapy”, an initiative focused on students with depression.

The hummingbird garden of the IEMS Iztapalapa. Teresa de Miguel, The Country

The garden is part of a project of a phd in Ecology María del Coro Arizmendi to allow the survival of these birds in the mexican capital. “In the City of Mexico, as we remove all the resource to pollinators, but if we manage to have a little bit of resource is going to be,” says Arizmendi. Up to now it has already created a dozen gardens, and has made more than a hundred people make their own refugiosa through a web page that explains what flowers prefer and how to make nectar for drinking fountains.

The idea originated five years ago in Washington, when he was in a meeting of the north American Initiative for the Protection of Pollinators (NAPPC, for its acronym in English). A mate spoke to him of the garden he had created in the White House, the then us first lady Michelle Obama, to keep bees, hummingbirds and other pollinators.

“I said: ‘why not instill the same thing in Mexico? You have The Pine [former presidential house]’. I laughed and told them that I was going to deem you crazy, but I decided to start to present it in the UNAM”. Planted about 25 bushes in a corner of the University and it was a success. “The hummingbirds have started to arrive, other faculties were interested and the idea began to grow.” His goal now is to create a corridor of gardens that also provide food for the migratory species that cross Mexico City on their way to the south.

The humming-bird only live in the american continent. Only in Mexico you can find 58 species that help to pollinate more than 1,300 species of wildlife, such as pineapple, beans, or different varieties of the plantain. “Ending the pollinators will make us kill ourselves,” she says. And, to avoid this, Arizmendi has a simple solution: plant flowers.

A hummingbird in the area of scientific research of the UNAM. Teresa de Miguel, The Country

Date Of Update: 08 January 2020, 08:00