RIP Baby Hummingbirds
The babies are dead, we are in mourning.
It wasn’t too long after I arrived at the Attleson Farm (almost 3 weeks ago) that Sylvia spotted the hummingbird nest just outside the kitchen window. She had noticed an adult bird flying to the same place on the same branch the past few days, and then she put 2 and 2 together. We got out the ladder that evening and had our first look up close.
And I filmed a little video, too.
They are so precious.
Since then we’ve been monitoring them on a daily basis. Mostly we just watched from the kitchen with the binoculars, but every few days we busted out the ladder (usually when someone visited who hadn’t seen them yet) and had another close inspection. A lot of people that were seeing my hummingbird pictures on Flickr couldn’t really comprehend how small they were, so the next time we set up the ladder I brought a quarter with me.
Slowly but surely they started getting feathers and their beaks were getting longer. We started seeing 2 little beaks sticking up from the nest when we watched them through the binoculars.
They were actually starting to look like birds, but it was still hard to imagine them ever being able to fly. And only a few days later, we could even see their heads sticking out from the nest.
It really was amazing that they could fit in such a tiny space: siblings, about ready to leave their nest behind and fly around the world drinking nectar from flowers. We knew that we didn’t have much time left with them, we knew that soon they’d be gone, but we weren’t prepared for it to end like this.
:(
