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Wishes do come true! After being fixated on hummingbirds for years, this one decided to build a nest in our yard. The nest is made of spiderwebs, moss, lichens, feathers, etc. As of yesterday, there was one jelly bean sized egg inside. Update: as of February 4th or 5th, there are two eggs in the nest.
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The first egg was laid on Tuesday February 2nd, the second on Thursday or Friday. The eggs are the size of jelly beans.
Each time I look, the nest is even cozier than before. The gray feathers surrounding the eggs keep growing in number.
The mother has been diligently protecting the eggs through a series of rain storms.
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The first chick was born sometime in the last 24 hours. I checked the nest yesterday morning as I was leaving for work and there were still two unhatched eggs.
The chick was moving around awkwardly and raising its tiny head. The mom came back as I was taking this macro from a ladder. She first tried to shoo me away by buzzing me and chirping loudly. I stepped back a few feet and she landed and stood on the edge of the nest. I saw her beak going in and hoped that she wasn't freaking out and injuring the chick because of my presence. I then saw the chick's tiny beak raised up and realized that the mom had already begun feeding it. Amazing!
I never even thought about it, but it appears as though they're born with short, light colored beaks.
The mother sitting on the nest
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First decent photograph of the two chicks together. Quite a bit fuzzier than when they emerged from their eggs. The older one is 6 days old and the younger one is 4 or 5 days old.
In this image they're in "beaks up" mode in anticipation of their mother returning with food.
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The feeding is a startling sight. I was surprised at how deep the mother's beak goes down the chick's throat. It goes all the way to the white spot on her beak, just below her head. I wasn't expecting this, because that's about the entire length of the chick's body at this point.
The chick either clamps on to the beak at times, or the beak encounters resistance inside the chick's body, because the chicks head gets pulled upward quite a ways during the feeding process.
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Tags: hummingbird chick hummingbird nest Anna's Hummingbird Calypte anna Berkeley, CA
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