A ruby-throated hummingbird weighs about as much as a nickel and beats its wings somewhere north of fifty times a second, which is exactly why almost nobody has ever gotten a good look at one. This weekend Ijams Park fixes that twice over — first by making the bird enormous and slow, then by putting a real one in a researcher's hand a few feet from your face.

★Communion: eight hummingbirds, larger than life

Thursday and Friday nights only, Knoxville artist Lauren Strohacker turns the Serendipity and Discovery Trails into an outdoor gallery. Eight enormous animated projections fill the woods and you walk right through them — a chance to see a hummingbird the way almost nobody ever does: slowed down, held still, and bigger than you are. Timed entry runs 8 to 10 PM, tickets are five dollars, and the park suggests giving it 45 minutes to an hour. Two nights, then it's gone.

★Saturday: the festival, and the banding station

The Hummingbird Festival takes the homesite Saturday from 7 AM to 1 PM — an early start on purpose. Banders from East Tennessee Avian Research and Seven Islands State Birding Park run a live research station in 25-minute small-group sessions, and hummingbirds are busiest right at first light, so the earliest sessions are the ones to want. New this year: the station is banding every bird it catches, not just the hummingbirds. Around it there's a marketplace of 50-plus artists and vendors, live animal encounters, guided walks, speakers, and hands-on art and science tables for all ages.

★Before you go

Festival admission is $12 for anyone 13 and up, $9 for kids 5 to 12, free under 5, with 10 percent off for Ijams Park members. Bird banding is a separate $6 ticket — buy it with your admission rather than hoping at the gate. Parking is at the Visitor Center, the overflow lot, and Meads Quarry; there's a parking fee, waived for members.