Question

from settled in the wild
1 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.
2 absentmindedly, i begin to recite william wordsworths \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.
3 wordsworths 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 heat.
4 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.
this question has two parts. answer part a and then
answer part b.
part a
in paragraph 3, what does the phrase open water imply about the birds migration?

1. storms are likely to arise during the long flights.
2. there is no place for the birds to land for food or rest.
3. there are no landmarks to help the birds find their way.
4. full darkness makes the flight confusing and dangerous.

part b
which excerpt from paragraph 4 best supports the correct answer from part a?

1. \go from the yucatan to the mouth of the big muddy without a refueling stop\
2. \halfway, the birds should self - destruct, should burn up and fall\

Explanation:

Answer:

(a) 2. There is no place for the birds to land for food or rest.
(b) 1. "go from the Yucatan to the mouth of the Big Muddy without a refueling stop"