Costa's Hummingbird Chicks

Welcome to our hummingbird world! We currently have 4 hummer feeders in our yard, and are looking to put in 2 more. We have also planted a lot of hummingbird-friendly vegetation (remeber my YouTube video, Costa's hummingbird on penstomens?) - more on that in the future... In the past couple years, the hummer population in the yard has exploded! We generally have Costa's hummingbirds (Calypte costae), but occassionally we've seen/heard a black-chinned hummer (Archilochus alexandri), although they usually occur farther east. Everywhere you step in the yard, you either hear hummingbirds, or you get "buzzed" by one as it whips past your ear. They're great fun to watch, and I'll write more about them in the future...

But this spring has had a great suprise: one of the hummers built her nest in clear view of our kitchen window!! She built the next in a mesquite tree, which doesn't leaf-out until late spring, so we had a clear view the entire time to observed the developement of the nest... and then the babies.

We first observed the female busy making her nest. She would even fly around the house and pick off cobwebs to use for her nest. Eventually, this is what we saw: two little beaks poking out of the edge of the nest.

While in house, I saw a couple great "family moments" that I took a photo of. The pictures were heavily zoomed, then cropped, so they aren't the greatest quality.

The entire chick development only occured for a couple weeks. The female built her nest in February (early!), we saw the first sign of babies around the 16th of March... and then, on the 2nd of April, we got home from a couple days in the field, and the babies had already fledged the nest!

This is the last photo I got of the chicks. I'm sure they're hanging

around the yard, waiting for handouts from mom, I just haven't

had the time to really look for them.