From an empty branch to teenagers in 6 weeks. Chronicle of the Nest of the Hummingbird Calyptus Anna

David Goliafsky says: “This timeline was filmed in a backyard in Cupertino, California. On Saturday, April 25, 2015, we noticed that a female hummingbird had begun building a nest. On Saturday, June 6, 2015, the young chicks flew out of it for good.

(Total 89 photos)

Source: JJournal/amigofriend

Nest building

1. The entire construction took 5 days, from 25 to 30 April.

2. Hummingbird builds a nest from down, cotton, feathers, soft parts of plants. It's all held together with a web. Outside, the nest is covered with pieces of bark and leaves for camouflage.

3. During the construction, the beak, lower abdomen (tamping), paws and wings are used. When the nest is built, the hummingbird lays eggs.

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hatching eggs

8. This is the least eventful part of the process.

9. A mother hummingbird sits on her eggs for a little over two weeks. In our case, it took her 16 days: April 30 - May 16.

10. During the day, from time to time, mother flies away to eat.

eleven.

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Feeding chicks from new hatchlings to fledglings

15. Chicks usually hatch on the same day both. I only found out today.

16. The mother regulates this process by starting full incubation only when she has laid both eggs. When the chicks appeared (May 16), I thought for several days that there was only one chick, because each time I could observe only one.

17. I think this is due to the fact that during this period the mother feeds them in turn, the second - when the first, having eaten for the previous feeding, sleeps off.

18. Small nanohummingbirds are born without feathers, with black skin, closed eyes and tiny yellow beaks. At first, in between feedings, the mother constantly sits on the nest, warming the babies.

19. After the eighth day, the chicks are already sufficiently overgrown with the first whitish feather-needles and have mastered thermoregulation, so the mother stops sitting on the nest even at night.

20. The eyes of the chicks open around the fifth day.

21. The mother hummingbird feeds her chicks mainly with small insects, later mixed with nectar. She does this by burping half-digested food deep into the chicks' throats.

22. Usually, having caught food, mother would fly in and sit on the same upper branch of the tree and sit there for a while, digesting. Then she began to descend to the nest, making sharp creaking sounds. She sat on the edge of the nest and fed one or both chicks, often several times.

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Feeding chicks, from appearance of normal plumage to departure from the nest

58. In the region of two weeks of age, on top of the “white needles”, the chicks are already almost completely covered with a normal feather.

59. They become more and more active, pushing, moving, trying to flap their wings.

60. Feeding is the same as before, only now the chicks look more and more like a slightly smaller copy of the mother, with somewhat shorter beaks, slightly yellow inside.

61. And finally, when the time comes, the chicks are removed from the nest and fly away to a greater life.

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Some frequently asked questions

84. Q: Where is Atets?!

A: Atets niht. He did his job at the very beginning, everything else is handled exclusively by the Mother.

85. Q: Is it true that looking at the chicks that have just begun to be covered with the first needle plumage, you are convinced that birds are descendants of dinosaurs?

A: It's true, it's true!

86. Q: Is two chicks a common thing?

A: Yes, moreover, it rarely happens otherwise. One egg almost never happens, more than two means that two females laid eggs in the nest.

87. Q: And how are they, well, with the toilet?

A: The chicks move over the side of the nest. This is a very funny sight, the chick shudders for a long time, sticks out its butt and, finally, “shoots”.

88. Q: What will happen to the chicks after they leave? How will they live, what to eat, where to sleep?

A: The first few days the chicks hang out in the area around the nest and the mother continues to feed them. I managed to see one such feeding, but high in the branches of the nest tree, and at that moment I didn’t have a camera to shoot. Then they themselves begin to feed on nectar and insects. And sleep like adults - somewhere on the branches, falling into a stupor so that energy is almost not consumed. Somewhere until autumn, the chicks will hang out together, then they will scatter anywhere. They will become fully grown in a year.

89. Here are all the videos in order in a separate entry. I don’t think that anyone will get to them, although in retrospect they are very interesting to look at, they give an idea of \u200b\u200bthe changes.