hummingbird dips its nib
May 19th, 2010 | Uncategorized
…in the inkwell of life.
I just hung this hummingbird feeder outside the window by my computer. This little bird is almost constantly sipping from it. How am I supposed to get anything done?
…in the inkwell of life.
I just hung this hummingbird feeder outside the window by my computer. This little bird is almost constantly sipping from it. How am I supposed to get anything done?
68 Responses to “hummingbird dips its nib”
Mesmerizing…
So cool! So is this story about the successful rescue and recovery of a baby hummingbird that was injured when it fell from its nest (I first saw this video last week):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7xBLvMIBZU&feature=player_embedded
I know this is a redundant question but, they have hummingbirds in Vermont? What do they do all winter?
Apart from that, I agree with L – absolutely mesmerising, although I’m not sure a publisher would be happy with the excuse that you were “watching a hummingbird”. My faint, crude, spooneristic tendencies just turned ‘hummingbird’ into ‘bummingherd’ which would be a collective noun for … well, let’s not go there.
OMG, Cathy! That’s incredible! I had no idea that’s how mother hummingbirds fed their babies. It’s amazing that she did it even while this guy was holding the baby.
As long as you can’t work, here’s something fun and both physically and mentally challenging to try: Point your index finger and place it in front of the feeder as a perch for the hummingbird, then stand perfectly still for about an hour until your body is part of the scenery. Eventually, the hummingbirds will no longer find you threatening, and will perch on your finger as it sips. The first-person view of a hummingbird diving directly towards your head is terrifying. It looks like a ten-foot long lance is charging your eyeball. You’ll never look at hummingbirds the same way.
At the very end of the video, it just…went backwards. Not turned around, but backed up. That was the part that amazed me.
Ian#3: “What do they do all winter?”
The quick answer is that they fly to Central America! (I mean, I know that many bird species migrate, but hard to think of these guys flying that far.)
(More details [HERE] )
Riotllama#6 “…That was the part that amazed me.”
Another amazing trick is to watch them pick over a flowered bush.
Bear in mind that they are living off nectar, for pete’s sake, while at the same time spending an enormous amount of energy, so they can’t afford to waste any time or energy.
They’ll approach a bush, touch every blossom on the bush exactly once, and they quickly move on to the next bush.
If only I were such a model of efficiency…
(Jealous of AB, that the hummbirds haven’t yet made it to souther Vermont.)
I always feel so lucky when they visit my yard–I think I shared recently that one fed at our nasturtiums for two minutes last year, chirping all the while! In a week, I saw a hummingbird five times, a record! I may have to get a feeder….my birthday’s right around the corner, so maybe I’ll put that on the wish list!
A few years ago, the same friend that watched the said hummingbird with me had one fly into her house and knock itself out. They rescued it and held it, giving it wee sips of water till it revived and flew away.
They are like magic to me, little flying bits of jewels.
I also have a pair of purple-breasted finches nesting nearby and so hear their song all day long. It’s so beautiful.
There’s a bird junkie for you right there! Maaan, Alison, watch your back, bird police is comin’ to get ya, you bird-sweet-stuff dealer! Spectacular clip, by the by, almost as tempting as the one with the bucket and the tree-juice … obviously, where you live, a lot of sweet things are goin’ on. Greets!
That was just so fascinatingly beautiful. I’ll bet Dr. Winnicott is mesmerized too 🙂
L said it first and best.
My upstairs flat in Oakland back in the 80s looked out on black walnut trees where hummingbirds nested. My partner, who introduced me to birding, warned me not to stand openly at the window gawping at the nearby nest (not as big around as a Kennedy half dollar) because it unnerves them and they’ll move to a location not under human observation. So I’d creep up to my window and peek over the sill in short bursts. You simply wouldn’t believe how tiny the egg was that appeared.
I saw an Attenborough special about hummers who live at a high altitude where it’s so cold they literally have to go dormant overnight, just close down their metabolism to conserve energy, until the sun is far enough up to give them a kick-start and they can go lapping again, long curled tongues sliding sinuously through their polished chitinous tubule beaks.
Getting excited here. Have to go, uh, think about allotments.
Cathy, GREAT video. I got sucked into all the others in the sidebar there, too, with fawns and kittens, etc.
@Maggie (#11)
Oh those words sound like birding porn…
“…and they can go lapping again, long curled tongues sliding sinuously through their polished chitinous tubule beaks.”
Minor quibble, the beak is made of keratin, not chitin. The exoskeletons found on crustaceans, arachnids, and insects are made of chitin. Higher order animals generally have keratin for their hard-but-flexible external parts (e.g. nails, beaks, horns, feathers, hair, etc.). Chitin is a polysaccharide (complex sugar molecule) substance, keratin is a protein substance.
Now that I’ve researched to be sure, I found the beak is convered in a keratin-like substance called rhamphotheca.
More info on hummingbird anatomy can be found here:
http://www.worldofhummingbirds.com/anatomy.php
(… goes back to a cool grey day in the big city, sipping her tea while procrastinating on her To-Do list …)
We had hummers at the feeder in Ludlow, VT this past weekend. That was the first time we saw them up there this year. We’ve had them at home for a few weeks. Such amazing little birds.
Wow. Love your video, Alison, and the one Cathy posted. Now I’m not getting any work done, either.
Lately these live cams on bird nests have been blowing my mind on the “Seven Wonders of the World” scale.
http://www.ustream.tv/hummingbirdnestcam
I was gone last week and missed the hummingbird eggs hatching, but now you can watch the babes. … The mother bird takes my breath away. She buzzes in and out, sometimes with another miniscule piece of fluff for the nest.
http://www.ustream.tv/theowlbox
And this one: . talk about drama. At around 11 pm last night, one of the owlets left the nest and hopped around trying her wings out. I guess they will be fledging for the next few nights.
[Freed from spam-filter limbo. –Mentor]
11 pm ESt that is. During the day you can see the owlets in their nestbox, doing their little experiments to figure out their feet and their depth perception I guess….
Oh S. Irene, I fear you’ve now wrecked my life. Gotta run…
Owlbox!
this is AMAZING! But somehow…it doesn’t seem right, to invade their privacy like this. I think I should alert the OCLU.
Oh holy jeezum! One of them just shook itself all out, then went back to sleep!
I found myself providing hummingbird sound effects and commentary by a very thirsty hummingbird while watching that video.
[dook dook dook] “AHHH. That hit the spot. Oh? What do we have here?” [dook dook dook dook] “Mmmmm. Now that I’ve whet my whistle I think I’ll go… oh, what’s this now? More?” [dook dook dook dook] “phew! This is really… no, I can’t possibly have anoth–” [dook dook dook dook] (and so on)
Hummingbirds and owlbox too! These are the best.
Thanks, Cathy and S. Irene.
the owlets are coming to the door right now to go out …
I think it’s an infrared camera at night on the outside of the box.
That hummingbird is going to regret it in the morning.
Oh my g*d two owlets outside, one was just UP ON TOP OF THE OWLBOX! She’s hopped down to the perch again now. I love the two nervous ones in the doorway.
maggie, yeah, … and how bout those wing motions —
looks like it takes a little practice to know how to fold them. is mom out hunting? are we about to see live mouse eating? “hmmm…tastes like nutria1!”
what a hoot
I recently read Life List by Olivia Gentile; a book about the birding life of Phoebe Snetsinger. Fascinating life. Amazing travels, travails and track list. I am very interested in birding as a result.
Well, I just tuned in to the Owlbox and the left front one was struggling to hork back an entire mouse. I couldn’t stop watching, but my own breakfast is indefinitely postponed.
I could cancel the rest of my day and watch the owlets. Obviously I have lived in the city for too long. I am going to tear myself away and go for a walk- it’s the first nice day here in a while and I don’t think watching teenaged owls qualifies as exercise.
I swear the beak lengths of the baby HBs have nearly doubled in a day or two. They used to look more like parrot beaks … but now that I think of it, of course the beaks would need to be short inside the egg.
I saw the mother come in and sit on them for awhile (branch and nest swaying in the wind, somehow such a calming sight)). And then when she left, the squashed down little chicks set about fluffing themselves up into their new shapes again. So funny.
S. Irene, I switched over to the livestream of a baby eaglet getting banded. It’s 2.5 hours later and her parents have still not returned, and how it’s getting dark there. She’s given up calling for them. I’m worried the human intrusion has driven them off. At least there’s a camera on her, surely someone will intervene if that’s really the case. right?
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bald-eagle-camera-ii
So, when are we going to get ABCam?
A LiveStream Portrait of the Artist?
Hi Maggie, I see what you mean. I wonder who banded the eaglet; hopefully they too are keeping an eye out. I looked at the related site and wrote to ask.
Another eagle cam on Ustream seems to be run by more conservation-focused folks: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/eagle-cam
Two eagle-ettes, eating silvery fish right now.
Has anyone seen ksbel6 lately? 🙁
Hairball (from a previous post): I’m afraid that my harrier hound can’t be described as being light as a hummingbird, as she weighed in at 54.6 pounds (about 24.5 kilograms) at the vet’s yesterday!
I wear my hair short (over the ears, but above the collar). When I spoke with a cashier at a local depatment store today, she paused for a moment, then called me “young man”. A moment later, she called me “young man” again! On the one hand, at age 55 I should be flattered. On the other…
…for the second year in a row, The Onion reports that Prague’s Franz Kafka International has been named the world’s most alienating airport, leading all other airports in lost luggage, delayed flights, despair and madness.
@Kate L (#35)
A few years back (awright, more like seven years back, it was 2003), I was on a business trip and I stopped in the local Wegman’s (a fabulous supermarket chain in upstate NY and PA) to pick up some beer and munchies so my colleagues and I could chow down while watching the game in our hotel. The cashier, a high school kid, asked me for ID. I didn’t quite understand what he was asking for. He repeated the request for ID.
“ID? You mean you are carding me?” I asked as I pulled out my wallet. “How old do you have to look to be carded?”
“If you look 27 or under, I have to ask for ID,” he answered.
I stopped dead in my tracks and looked him straight in the eyes as he scanned my driver’s license to see his reaction to my birthdate.
“Young man, I am old enough to be your mother. And biologically speaking, I am old enough to be your grandmother. You just made my day!”
I grinned like an idiot as I repeated that he made my day (I was in my mid 40s at the time). The woman in line behind me was not entertained at all as I mentioned that I would soon be eligible for AARP. I’m not sure, but I think she hissed under her breath.
Alas, the grey came in fast and furious in the ensuing years, and I’m unlikely to get carded anytime in the near future, unless I’m wearing a hat.
Speaking of grey hair… earlier this week I was presenting a training session to a decently-sized audience (a real live meeting, with catered food, not the usual stupid teleconferences that are a pox on my schedule).
During the lunch break, I ran into an old pal, a woman I hadn’t seen in about five or six years. The first words out her mouth were, “Damn, you’re still skinny. And you’re grey.” “Gee thanks. And you’re fat,” I replied. “How come you’re not grey?” “Because I’m fat,” she replied. “Well, I can get rid of the grey faster than you can get rid of your fat ass! Besides, I’d rather be grey than nay.” We both laughed hard, and the people on the food line around us thought we were quite odd.
I miss the days when I worked hard, played hard, and laughed even harder. Now I just work hard, and watch my countdown calendar tick away. I think the laughter kept the grey away.
(… goes back crunching data for her next PowerPoint mass hypnosis session …)
Three owlets left the box tonight and have been congregating on its roof, screeching in excitement. I guess I would too, if I were a few weeks old and discovered I could fly.
I find myself worrying about the self-esteem of the one left behind, however, trapped by her own uncertainty?
I realized late this evening I was obsessively watching chickadees, eaglets, etc, because in these livestreams nature is not grossly fucked up by our actions. I am unable to bear thinking about ot looking at footage of what is happening to my beloved Gulf.
Anthropomorphization much?
@HOH(37): It could be worse, you could be going bald!!!
@Ian (#39)
Actually, my hair has thinned out quite a bit, which is why I said “Better grey than nay.” It’s sort of a race between my hair turning grey and falling out. At least guys are expected to lose some of their hair and no one looks funny at them when they see the shiny pate.
Women who have thinning hair or hair loss get weird looks. Guys can always shave their heads, and no one thinks that’s odd, they think it’s sexy. Try doing that as female-identified and see how far you can go without a reaction.
I used to work with a guy who had a long ponytail. As his hairline receded, he had to come to grips with the incongruity of a huge mane in back and lots of scalp up front. He decided to shave his head. Outside of work, he’s a biker-type, so the shaved head looks in sync with his persona.
Inside work, he moved into upper management, and the shaved head looks terrific with his dark power suits and ties, and he definitely doesn’t look like one of the ozone-level C-suite clones with “executive hair.”
The running line around here is that to get promoted to those ozone-level jobs, you have to be a white boy with good hair. Sad, but true, although there are a few exceptions to the rule.
(… goes back to twiddling her locks around her fingers …)
Has anyone else been following Hollywood Farm Girl, Tammy Etheridge’s blog? (She’s Melissa Etheridge’s ex – at least, for now.) She’s writing about their breakup, and it’s very sad. There have been posts she put up in the last couple of weeks that were then taken down a day later, but now it seems she’s not holding back. There are allusions to Melissa cheating, and being quite the distant partner. As big a Melissa fan as I am, I feel really badly for Tammy. Sad all around.
Hair – oy. Before chemo, I had very, very thick hair. I loved my hair. We were partners in crime, the best of buddies. (Yup, I actually thought of my hair as a separate entity. We’re all allowed our quirks.) After chemo…welllll, not as thick on the sides and back, and very thin on top. Many tears. I miss her, and feel awful for having poisoned her. Ah, whaddya gonna do.
Last winter I had to have my chest shaved for surgery. It grew back, of course, but it came back grey! I feel like one of those silver gorillas you see in nature films, with the younger, darker apes constantly challenging them for superiority.
#41 Ginjoint
That is the first that I have seen her blog. I can’t help but feel badly for her. I have always been a fan of ME’s music, but never thought much of her personally. She just always seemed like a troubled soul to me, can’t quite put a finger on it. I always hate to hear about breakups and wish Tammy well. Hopefully she will find true love and a truly supportive partner.
My sister calls them “hummingbees”.
Near where I work, two peregrine falcons have a nest under a bridge. We’ve been watching them for a little more than a month. One of their four eggs hatched yesterday. If you use binoculars, they’re amazing to watch. You can’t get too close, though.
I always wanted to grow up to be a silver fox, like Anderson Cooper. I suppose a silverback is near enough, eh, Dr. E?
I once visited Symond’s Yat in the Wye Valley (near the legendary Hay-on-Wye that has more second-hand and independent bookshops per capita than any other town in the world). Near the summit they have a viewing point with sets of binoculars for the general public to view a peregrine falcon’s nest. I got there just as mummy brought back a pigeon and it was a treat to see the fluffy peregrine chicks demolish it.
@Ginjoint (#42)
The thin hair could be from tamoxifen, if you’re on it. And definitely the oophorectomy. The estrogens keep the hair thick and growing. Maybe Rogaine can help?
I tried Rogaine a few years ago, but I didn’t like the mess, and didn’t care for putting goopy stuff on my nice clean hair every morning, it made it feel not-so-clean, so I gave up after about a month. I suppose if my hair were really super thin I might go for it, because I’d probably be putting other goopy stuff in my hair anyway to mask the emerging scalp.
RE baldness: A few years ago, I ducked into a local diner. The waitress was a neighbor of mine who had never seen me indoors before. Therefore, she had never seen me without a hat before.
She looked at me with surprise. “You don’t look like you look you’d look.” She realized this sentence sounded odd. “Er, I mean, you always wear a hat, so I assumed you were bald.”
To tie together baldness with birdwatching: The Bald Eagle baby I was worried about above spent the night unfed and untended by her parents after the nest was invaded by a wildlife official to band her (female, weighs about 7 lb). However, the adults did return this morning and resumed feeding her. Just shows how human intrusion disrupts animal behavior. Photos of the nest, banding, and eagles can be seen at the Massapoag Pond website at http://massapoag.zenfolio.com/p212035147/h1f6801c2#h90ecbfa
Hairball, Ginjoint… My hair was thinning out until hormone replacement therapy took over my endocrinological system. A friend back east who is our age also had thinning hair, until her doctor recommended she take spironolactone (the same drug they give pre-op M-to-F transsexuals). My friend started taking the spironolactone, and reports that her hair has made a come back!
The company I work for makes a drug that grows hair (Only works on men, though- Sorry Ginjoint!). I’m tempted to try it, since I can get it for free. Trouble is, if you take it you can’t donate blood, and that’s one of the few things I do just for Karma.
On the other hand, I haven’t donated blood in the past year, since my surgery, and I’m not sure I’m allowed any more. I need to find this our for certain. If I’m not allowed to give blood, let’s make with the hair pills!
#49 maggie Thanks for the update, i’m so closed off to people but am helpless in the area of suffering animals.
#43 my mother sometimes refers to my hairy alpha male father as “Old Silverback” Boy, I couldn’t argue with that description. I guess his controlling nature might have a little something to do with my closed offed-ness.
My grad school friends an I used to play a road-trip game called “Words That Will Never Be USed To Describe”.
When the time came to list words that will never be used to describe me, “Alpha” was a contender. The ultimate winner was “Subtle”.
Yeah, Khatgrrl, regarding Melissa I agree about the troubled soul. Plus, I don’t think being in L.A. helps either.
Kate, I can’t take HRT, and yeah Hairball, I’m on tamoxifen. Rogaine was an absolute mess, as you described. My dermatologist just wrote me a prescription for a topical steroid, to see if that can jump start things a little. I miss my hair, but you know, I’m also very angry about it. It’s as if someone changed my body without my permission – like if someone gave you a tattoo while you were passed out or something. Dr. E, what drug do you speak of, Propecia? ‘Cause I might want to try that, seeing as I don’t have to worry about pregnancy, which seems to be the main (only?) reason women are told not to take it.
And Dr. E, not being a loud, chest-thumping alpha male is a GOOD thing. Trust me on this. You’re able to accomplish so much more via subterfuge this way.
And now for a quick wank session whilst viewing pictures of a young Betty White. Oh, who am I kidding? I wouldn’t throw her out of my bed TODAY. I’m a sucker for dimples and the glint in a smart woman’s eye.
Hey Alison. We’re not supposed to work all the time. What is life worth if we can’t take time to watch the birds? Relax, enjoy.
Ginjoint (54) I was watching a Match Game rerun on the Game Show Network last week. Betty White was a panelist. She had tiny lions embroidered all over her jacket.
Gene Rayburn: “Hey, you have lions on your thing…”
Betty White: “No, they’re on my JACKET!”
How hard it is to imagine all that baby hummingbird as the product of nectar alone! Does the mother hummingbird also eat flies, ants, beetles, tiny wasps? Does her crop secrete something protein-rich that mingles with the sugars, a sort of gastric lactation? Pigeons do; pigeon milk actually is the name for it; but “hummingbird milk” yields nothing on Google…
And now, from PRIDE AND PROMISCUITY: THE LOST SEX SCENES OF JANE AUSTEN (A Eckstut, D Ashton, eds.; Fireside, 2001):
‘Miss Bennet.’ It was the voice of Mrs Hurst. ‘You must chuse, whether to forego forever the affections of our brother, or whether to submit, with what degree of pleasure you may perhaps not now be capable of anticipating, to the investigations of Miss Bingley and myself . . .’
If I may follow up on Alex K#57’s tangent on Jane Austen a bit.
For the Janeites on the list I’d like to commend to your attention a BBC miniseries called Lost in Austen. The quick summary is: “Modern London working girl, a great fan of Jane Austen, finds herself trading places with Elizabeth Bennet. Much confusion ensues.”
OK, this might sound potentially pretty dippy, but it really is very well done, and very enjoyable. The more familiar you are with Austen (and P&P in particular) the more you’ll enjoy it.
I see from IMDB that there is apparently a movie version coming out in 2011, but I’d definitely check out the miniseries.
[I don’t want to give away too much, but I’ll mention a more direct connection to Alex K’s note: in which Caroline Bingley, while declaring that she still means to marry Mr Darcy, nonetheless makes a pass at Amanda Price, the heroine/Elizabeth Bennet-surrogate.]
Anyway I (and my Beloved, a true Austen purist) enjoyed it a lot.
Alex K, from obsessive birdwatching over the last few days, I can answer your question: Mama hummingbird (this is a single parent nest) is feeding her wee ones a mix of nectar and bug puree. Protein and sugar. And after half a day from not watching, I can log back in and actually register GROWTH in them, including beak lengthening. From egg to fledge is 21-28 days, in their instance. That site is well-moderated, and questions get answered fast. The nestlings are now standing up occasionally and flapping wings, and they keep from falling out of the golfball-sized nest by hooking their feet into the woven bottom as they flap. Adult hummers can beat their wings 200 times a SECOND. I can’t quite comprehend that. I don’t think there’s anything my body can doo 200 times a second except maybe some autonomic or neural activity.
(Ginjoint, not a peep from you.)
On other fronts, the remaining egg in Mrs. Rose’s grade school incubator will probably hatch today (I got to see the previous hatchling moved to a brooder yesterday by excited but gentle little hands); the teenaged owls are VERY active learning to fly short hops; 5 of 7 black-capped chickadees have hatched, deep pink featherless blobs who can open their mouths unbelievably wide when mom or dad returns with food; the night critter cam in Kentucky sadly reports the 3 thrasher chicks hatched on the 18th were eaten by a black snake on the 20th, but mice and others are still very visible in that slice o’nature; and the town newspaper close to Massapoag Pond ran a full page story about the eaglet banding.
Yes, livestream has possessed me, but it’s actually improved my essay and political writing. I suspect it’s a right brain/left brain balance thing.
Kate L’s story reminded me of a wonderful funny (and moving) story called “Boys at the rodeo” by Judy Grahn. *
In it her gang of lesbian women are at a rodeo and realize that they are being mistaken for young boys because of their hair and their clothes. I remember it as evoking that 70’s free feeling and humor of freefalling between the heterosexual poles. (Back before we could tell that the polarsexual ice caps would begin to seriously melt and the climate to measurably change ….)
And I also remember in that story JGrahn’s very cool observation that the Brahma bulls (billed as the most feared and dreaded creature of the rodeo when I was a kid) were the same bulls that in India were respectfully left alone to peacefully roam the streets.
** (It’s in a collection she made called True to Life Adventure Stories. Vol. 2. ((Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1981).
About the streaming live birds, may I recommend the wood duck, too, who is still incubating her eggs, seen from above, a mostly very still shape. Peaceful.
And then I go and worry about the disruption that might happen from this same technology misused by less respectful people. (If the owls are bringing in ad revenue, should OwSHA step in?)
(And re those eagles, for the first time I began to wonder what percentage of the time a banding actually drives off the parents –ever? Do they make those statistics available? )
a group of hummingbirds is called “a charm” or “a troubling” (according to internet)
@S. Irene (#62)
Alas, my copy of An Exultation of Larks by James Lipton flew the coop and I can’t look it up.
http://www.amazon.com/Exaltation-Larks-Ultimate-James-Lipton/dp/0140170960
(Yes, the same James Lipton from Inside the Actor’s Studio). I think I will pick up a new copy of the book, it was good bathroom reading material. Uh huh, my library has running water. :).
Damn it, typo even with preview function…
It should be An Exaltation of Larks.
As an aside the term for these collective nouns for animals is “terms of venery” (which has its root in the word for “pursuit” reflecting the origin of the terms for use in hunting).
Furthermore, the adjective form is, um, “venereal”.
Webcam for eagles on Hornby Island. I like the close-up camera better, but the more distant one shows how windy it gets up in that nest. I’ve only seen one parent and the baby.
http://www.hornbyeagles.com/webcam.htm
Three of the peregrine eggs have hatched (there are four). Mom & Dad devotedly fetch newly-fledged robins and pigeons all the livelong day.
NLC #58, it warms my heart-cockles to hear you refer to your S/O as “Beloved”.
Those incredible little owlettes learned to play Canasta yesterday !