Question

read the passage. there are several questions about this passage. from settled in the wild it is a rainy morning, the first week of may, good weather to plant nasturtiums. i sit on the porch steps with rubber boots on, a baseball cap, and a slicker, holding the packages of seeds i bought at the feed store in town yesterday. the rain is steady and cold, the light is steel gray, and the yard is patchy and wet. but the pictures on the packages vibrate with color. nothing looks as good as these nasturtium flowers right now, deep red, eye - jolting orange, electric yellow. absentmindedly, i begin to recite william wordsworth’s “i wandered lonely as a cloud” to myself. i have known the poem by heart ever since my father taught it to me when i was a child: for oft, when on my couch i lie in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon the inward eye which is the bliss of solitude; and then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils. wordsworth’s inner eye saw daffodils. i say the poem and see hummingbirds. the nasturtiums are for them, and planting the flowers is my gesture of faith that they will come back to my yard once more. as i rip open the packages and push the seeds into the dirt, i know that these tiny bright - colored nectar - drinking birds, each of whom weighs only a few grams—about the weight of four or five of these seeds—have already whirred in erratic flocks across five hundred miles of open water, running the gulf of mexico in a twenty - six - hour feat. hummers do exactly what physiologists once insisted they could not do. a bird that weighs so little, they argued, cannot go from the yucatan to the mouth of the big muddy without a refueling stop. such a dot of a bird cannot carry the extra fat it needs to get across all that water. halfway, the birds should self - destruct, should burn up and fall like a cloud of cinders. but now we know that they can carry the fat they need, and they do, instead of burning up, they land in the antebellum gardens of the south, pooped, drooped, and alive. and another spring has begun. the ruby - throat is the only species of hummingbird that always turns east, here as the names north. one thousand miles to surry, maine. they will be here as the nasturtiums put out their first brave leaves. hummers are built for heat and the sweet profusion of flowers. their fall migrations draw them down into mexico and central america, but it astonishes me that a bird this small flies so far north. home for some of them is right here in this clearing, a precise measure on their internal compasses, and every spring they want it back. i have read that rubies survive cool maine nights by falling into torpor. this question has two parts. answer part a, and then answer part b. part a what is a central idea in the passage? 1. the author shows how scientific facts about nature can be fascinating. 2. the author is eagerly awaiting the arrival of hummingbirds to the yard. 3. the author reveals how a poem expresses universal feelings about nature. 4. the author is gradually learning the importance of the names of hummingbirds. part b select two main ways that the author develops the correct central idea from part a. 1. the author explains how sunlight gives color to the birds’ feathers. 2. the author discusses the small numbers of fossils from ancient birds. 3. the author visualizes the various locations of the birds on their migration north. 4. the author admires the birds’ actions when they are protecting their territories. 5. the author describes the planting of seeds that will soon provide flowers for the birds.

Explanation:

The passage starts with the author on a rainy day looking at flower - seed packages and then reciting a Wordsworth poem. It connects the act of planting flowers to the arrival of hummingbirds, showing the author's eagerness for the hummingbirds' arrival. For Part B, visualizing the birds' migration and describing the flower - planting for the birds both support the central idea of waiting for hummingbirds.

Answer:

Part A: 2. The author is eagerly awaiting the arrival of hummingbirds to the yard.
Part B: 3. The author visualizes the various locations of the birds on their migration north.

1. The author describes the planting of seeds that will soon provide flowers for the birds.