Sunday, August 19, 2012

Baby hummingbirds

A good friend of mine was fortunate to have a "birds eye view" of a hummingbird nest in her back yard.  We got some terrific photos.
Enjoy them and a few facts.
In general, the hummingbird nest building and the raising of the young is all done by the female Hummingbird. Hummingbirds do not use bird houses and they do not nest in cavities. They prefer to make their small cup-shaped nest in the fork of a tree branch. The hummingbird nest will be made out of downy-like plant material that's held together with spider webs.The female hummingbird will usually lay 2 eggs in the hummingbird nest, sometimes only 1. The hummingbird eggs will be laid on 2 different days, but will usually hatch on the same day because the female will not start incubating the the eggs until the second egg is laid. The humming bird eggs will be white and less than half an inch long, about the size of a small jelly bean or pea. Once hatched, The female will feed them with a mixture of nectar and tiny insects and spiders, that she will collect in her crop and regurgitate the mixture into the mouths of the young. The insects and spiders will provide the protein that the baby hummingbirds need to grow.Because of their extremely high metabolism, hummingbirds will have to feed every 10 to 15 minutes, except at night when they go into a state of torpor to slow down heir metabolism so they can survive without eating until morning.........so there you go!