I found another hummingbird nest!!!

Great photos sunnyg. Thanks so much for sharing them with us. I'll be looking with binoculars on some of our trees before they leaf out.
WIB,
SW

Those shots of the babies being fed just made me all warm & fuzzy. Great pics!

Thanks for the map, Maggi...I wonder if they have an equivalent for the west coast populations? SW, I bet you've got some nests around there, with all the action at your feeders! Taking the pics makes me feel all warm n fuzzy too, Beautifulchaos :-). Kaper, they really do indeed look like they're going to go any time now, and I spent a good deal of time watching the nest this morning (met several of my neighbors while I was at it. LOL). I might not have gotten many productive things done today, but I figure I better enjoy the experience while I can, as it will soon be gone. Sheri, the salvias are the current menu, along with the geraniums...we had a freeze which damaged all the fuchsias which they normally adore, and other stuff just isn't blooming yet. Man, I need to get my act together and plant, plant, plant! I took a much better series of feeding shots with better lighting this afternoon, but I'm just too beat to post them now...so until tomorrow :-)

Sunny, You'll find links over at the bird forum in this sticky.


http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/956793/

Thanks Mrs Ed! I'll check it out. I forgot to ask last night, onewish1, when do you start getting hummers in your area? How about the rest of you? I know we have ones that hang out all winter in this area, but there is a real party going on during the summer....

Here is the start of the series from yesterday with some better lighting...here they look like the are dueling with their beaks

Mom arrives...

good stuff...

Gimme more, Mom!

That's more like it!

Over here too! Mmmmm.....

Mom starts a little repair on the nest...

This message was edited Mar 20, 2009 8:21 AM

Repairs while kids "sword fight"

This one strand is so unruly!

There's a bit of stuff out of place over here too...

But this is still the problem area....

It's time to go (I'm not sure why this pic turned out like this...oops)

Mom sat in a nearby tree for a few minutes, and then flew off...

I can't get enough of those darlin' pics! I think the one with dueling beaks would do well to be titled "Touche"...ha!

Otherwise, I can't remember what month it is that they show up here. I should have made a note of it. (If I had a nickel for everytime I've said that!) This may sound really odd...but last year I had a dream that one rounded the corner and hovered in front of me, as to say, "get our food ready lady!" Funny enough they did show up a couple of weeks later.

They are very special little birds to me (and many others, I'm sure)...

We bought our house in June of '05 and there was nothing but yew(sp?) bushes surrounding the house. We dug them all up. I have planted a ton of flowers since then. (There is only ONE on the property that was here when we moved in.) Anyway, the hummers love a lot of the plants I've chosen and started coming around quite a bit. In '06, I put a feeder out for them and they have obliged me with up-close and personal visits since then! They always seem to show up when I'm having a bad, mad, sad day; as if to remind me to focus on the lighter side of life. I've had them come up to my face and just hover on several occasions as well!

The year before last we had a single baby coming around to the feeder! I didn't realize it first, until I saw the difference in size next to the adults. The baby favored sitting on a big banana leaf that was by the front porch, just swaying away with the wind. That was the first time that I saw one of their tongues! I guess the baby was catching tastes in the wind?!

Another cute tidbit: in the first year of having a feeder on the front porch -- our regular mail lady wrote a note on one of my pieces of mail that said: Shelley, please refill your hummingbird feeder. Thanks to you, I got to see one up close for the first time! That still makes me smile. :-D

Wonderful thread, Sunny. How considerate of Mama to build a nest on a bare branch so you can take these fabulous photos.

Sunny - You asked about the E coast arrival of the Rubies. Well I wondered if I saw one today....I've had a feeder up for a couple weeks now. near my front door 7 picture window. when I returned home today from errands, something small zipped past me as I approached the front door!! 'from looking at the migration map, they have been a few seen in my area....so...could be , but definitely will be soon. gonna make a fresh batch of sugar water in the morning
Sheri

Shelley, that's so funny about about your mail lady...great stories!

Thanks Margaret, I agree, I've got a good view. The tree is just starting to leaf out, so if this happened just a tad bit later, I wouldn't have been able to see them at all.

Sheri, how exciting! Yay!

I've spent a good deal of time yesterday on hummer watch. I'm pretty sure my neighbors think I'm nuts, since I kept going out there. LOL. At one point I was sure the babies were going to fledge, but then they got rained on and settled into the nest again. When I left for the evening around 6 pm they were still in the nest. We had a lot of rain last night, but it is clear and cold this morning. I just checked on them, and one is perched on the outside of the nest, and I can't see the other one. I'll start a new thread with pics...I just have 100's of shots to wade through first. (Perhaps my neighbors are right? I must admit I'm just a tad obsessed. I've never seen this before though, and I'd love to be there when they head out into the world although I have a feeling I'll miss it. ;-)).

New thread here: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/966081/#new