Lotsa Action on the Hummingbird Cam!!

On my last post I gave a link to a hummingbird cam.... please scroll down to check it out!

Here though, is some true drama that happened yesterday. These are clips of about 2 hours long, so once you press play you can drag the counter to :57. (It's very sensitive so move it a nanometer as it jumps greatly in time otherwise). At that marker, you will see a lizard approach the nest in the rose bush in which it sits. The mother bird, Pheobe, attacks a lizard who comes looking for lunch. By about 1:06 you will see her remove one egg, which apparently is the size of a tic tac. The people watching can chat about this and apparently are thinking it was not viable so the mother removed it or she put it somewhere for safe keeping. I would assume the former.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/5495849 or CLICK HERE

Or here where you can watch her building the nest!

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/3540265 or CLICK HERE

Every Day a Miracle

OK, if it's daylight where you are (and we now have an extra hour of it, thank you DST), you MUST drop what you're doing right now and go to this link!!! IMMEDIATELY!

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Hummingbird-Nest-Cam or CLICK HERE

Ms. Kelly sent this to me and I have been utterly enchanted ever since. You will find a tiny and perfect deep cup of a nest holding at least one tiny egg.... and the mother whizzes off and back with that lawnmower-like buzz that only a hummingbird's wings can make. She quite is beautiful -- ... takes my breath away with her big, dark almond shaped eyes, her delicate, slender blue beak, her iridescent green body, and her red throat.

She pokes at the egg, sits on it, flys off and flies back. Lots of action. The sun is bright wherever this is, at least today it's been. And knowing how small they are, I have no idea how this camera blows them up to fill the entire screen.

Why are you still reading this!! Hurry toward delight!!

This is from the website of the people who film this nest, in their back yard in CA.

Phoebe is a non-migratory Channel Islands Allen's Hummingbird (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen's_Hummingbird). She builds her nests in a rose bush, and the nest is about the size of a golf ball, with eggs being about the size of a tic-tac candy. The season for nesting is October through May/early June, and Phoebe will lay four to five clutches per season. One or two eggs are laid per clutch, they hatch after 17 days, and the chicks typically fly three to four weeks later. Phoebe will sometimes build a new nest, but frequently repairs old nests. For more information, please check out our Frequently Asked Questions (below).

Photo credit: Thank you to

www.flickr.com/photos/richarddumoulin/3558263504/

And while I'm ordering you around, lol, please come back if you can to tell me what you think.

Hummingbird

When we went up to our cabin 10,000 feet into the Rockies, I bought the cheapest hummingbird feeder Ace Hardware had and melted down about a cup of sugar in a cup of water. When it cooled I filled the feeder, hung it on a nail off the porch and hoped that something might happen in the 4 days we were there. Well in literally 4 minutes there was the distinct almost cartoon like whiz or whir of their rapidly beating wings and lo and behold, this is what I saw outside the front window.



I am leaving out of town for an important week Monday and have half the day eaten up tomorrow with a seminar. There is much more I want to tell on this, and I have so many pictures of colorful birds that stopped by our porch to eat the seed I put out. I pre-loaded a bunch of things, and I may be able to send those from my iphone while I'm gone, and can pick back up with the birds of Colorado when I return.

I look forward to a little more free time in the summer and the chance to do more research for my posts than I have been able to in the last 4 months.