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Holly, Berry and Bush, A Hummingbird Family
July 21 2014
The last month has been spent filming the unlikely. By that, I mean Holly’s nest. Holly built a nest only 2 or 3 feet off the ground in a holly bush right beside a deer path. If a deer so much as turned her mouth to the grass beside the branch the nest would likely be spilled. I first noticed Holly on June 2nd and she had just laid an egg. The next day I saw two in the nest. I expected the nest to get wiped out by forest traffic, so I hesitated to invest too much time in filming it, but given it’s easy accessibility, I really had to film what I could. I don’t get too many chances with this good a vantage point. I filmed her sporadically to watch for activity. After 17 days, the chicks hatched on June 19th and I was able to spend a good part of the day on the 21st filming the nest. Things were going really well for the chicks up until about June 28 till they were infested with flower mites and the crows showed up. I don’t usually get so much crow activity, but I think they had a healthy batch of chicks and they hunted as a family unit. This often caused much cheeping and chirping among the hummingbirds as they united in chorus to drive the crows away. I think the Coopers Hawk has moved away because it used to keep the crows out of this section of Hummingbird Hills. Hummingbirds actually like nesting near raptors as it tends to dissuade crows from becoming too mouthy in their area. Now with no top raptor in the forest, the crows would pass through Hummingbird Hills and take up perches in the trees while all the hummingbirds freak out. The best defence a hummingbird can employ is a loud and persistent chirping sound. You can hear that in the video too when the crow is on camera. I got lucky with that shot because as I panned down to the nest, Berry hoisted her little butt up to the nest edge and pooped. I had to put it in the video. Here’s a video showing some of the highlights of their time in the nest. http://youtu.be/h2rGGPMErjE
It was on one of the crow’s hunting trips that I saw them wipe out Gina’s nest in the Oak tree. Gina put up a valiant defense, but her loud persistent clicks and chirps lost out to a healthy appetite and the crow won. If it’s any consolation, I think the crow went deaf. There is a photo of the occasion in the short video in this blog.
The flower mite infestation started about June 27 with just a few but soon grew to biblical proportions. Flower mites usually hitch rides between flowers by jumping on a hummingbird at one flower and leaping off at another. What the flower mites weren’t expecting was a stop at the nest and a lot of them seemed to like it there. Perhaps they found some food in the nest, like little spills from the feedings. After a few days, there were so many mites on the chicks it looked like rush hour at a Tokyo Train station. There was a mass exodus of mites exchanging rides at each feeding. Studies have shown that flower mites can eat up to half the nectar in a flower which leaves less for the hummingbirds but there’s a lot of food to eat at this time of the year so it doesn’t stress the birds. I think the sheer amount of mites on their faces must stress them a bit though. It kind of made me itchy to watch. After 21 days, Berry and Bush fledged, and I was able to catch it on camera. After a couple of days, I couldn’t spot any flower mites on them. I think once they are able to scratch them off and fly away, instead of being nest-bound, the mite numbers drop dramatically.
Holly, Berry and Bush beat the odds, No deer or person crushed the nest, the flower mites didn’t kill them and the crows missed them too. No one is more surprised than me, it’s one of the most exposed nests I have ever seen and I’m glad I chose to follow it as closely as I did.
Noni, Buttons and Bows
Here is a timeline video of Noni, Buttons and Bows. http://youtu.be/2iUJ3AnsYnA I just finished live casting them from the apartment across the road. Noni has a nest hanging from a small ivy branch right over a barbeque on the patio of an apartment. Luckily one of the apartment managers saw it and pointed it out to the tenant so he didn’t start up his barbeque and smoke the little guys. It was fairly difficult to live cast because I had to set up my computer in the utility room and string the wires, but with helpful management, it was made easier. Being on the ground floor helped but I couldn’t leave my camera alone for too long lest it get lifted.
It went quite well and I didn’t think I would catch the fledge on video, but as I was filming, the tenant came out of his apartment, as he does every day, but this time Buttons and Bows could fly and they didn’t waste the motivation. They took off and became fledglings. They are now happily flying around the treetops and getting fed by Noni every half hour or so. It won’t be long before they discover the feeders on most of the apartment balconies and start sucking up the sugar. This time of year, there is lots to eat for little hummingbirds.
Nature Bob in Alaska
I should write more about Alaska because it was such an amazing time. One of the great things about it was meeting Bob Armstrong. http://www.naturebob.com/ Bob has been photographing Alaska Wildlife for about 40 years. He is one of the rare people who got to retire early and followed his muse. He lives in Juneau overlooking the Gastineau Channel and spends his days investigating nature. He has many books out, chronicling all sorts of wildlife, from birds to insects. One of his most interesting books deals with natural connections. He discovers and describes the connection between various unlikely animals, insects and natural processes. He uncovered the connection between hummingbirds and sapsuckers. The sapsuckers tap holes through the bark of certain trees, like cottonwoods, where they eat sap, but the sapsuckers aren’t the only ones eating from the well. Hummingbirds also grab a sweet snack when they can. Then there are things that you wouldn’t think of, like why do mink go into marmot holes? It turns out that the mink is eating the larvae that grow in the marmot’s dung and in eating the larvae, inadvertently cleans out the marmots den by dragging the dung outside with it.
It’s the kind of observation that can only come through years of spending hour upon hour in the forest watching the animals.
I was lucky enough to have Bob treat me to a walk around the mountain top in Juneau, which is accessed by a cable-car tram and is full of tourists. Bob has a free lifetime pass from the tram company because he has added so much interest to the top of the mountain by photographing the animals and wildlife. Many of his photos are on display at the Tram’s mountain top station. When accompanied by Bob up the mountain, I was treated like royalty or at least part of the royal entourage. I don’t have many photos of Bob because we were always pointing out lenses towards the wilderness, but he’s probably one of the most content people I have met, and someone to emulate.
It’s a Full Field!
June 2 2014
I am going to have to tell you more about Alaska later. Meanwhile life races on like Secretariat at the Belmont Stakes.
I am live webcasting Noni, Buttons and Bows, which live in an ivy bush hanging off the side of an apartment entrance across the road. Buttons and Bows hatched about May 28. http://youtu.be/-GPji-_hKLQ http://youtu.be/cYfNOsZC_Bk
I am across the road because Flowers nest in our yard got destroyed. Flower has some time off now and I am not sure what that means for her nesting in our yard.
Meanwhile in Hummingbird hills, I am watching Coral, Crystal and Rose. All of them are sitting on eggs and in very different types of trees. Crystal is on a very thin Ocean Spray branch right beside a path about 5 ft off the ground, http://youtu.be/Xnt1gx0AJrQ http://youtu.be/vdqniPe74Q0 Rose is 10 ft off the ground on a long alder sprout arching over to form part of the roof of the brush http://youtu.be/46MaW_yVmDQ and Holly is in a holly bush only 2 ft off the ground. She is only protected because the holly is so prickly. http://youtu.be/ipHuUjQ490M http://youtu.be/jJ1kQ64gTlw http://youtu.be/QVLSp8BkMJE
I also found Dawn sitting right in the same spot as she has nested 3 times before. Right above the walking path, that means I’ll have a nice bench to sit on while I film the chicks. http://youtu.be/NL4ovSI4EHo
Alaska with the BBC
I have been unusually quiet for a reason. I just got back from Alaska and working with the BBC to find and film hummingbirds in Juneau. In this age of strangeness, I didn’t want to alert anyone to the fact that I was going to be out of town to protect my home and wife from those who may want to know that kind of thing. I had a great adventure. 
I got flown up to Alaska to work with some of the most talented guys in the industry. Alex Lanchester has been everywhere in his 10 or so years with the BBC as a producer. He’s made films about Birds of Paradise in Papua New Guinea and met headhunters! It’s a good thing that the BBC finds his head more desirable to have around then headhunters do. Mark MacEwan was the cameraman and you will have seen his work in almost any BBC animal documentary. He has chased lions through the Savannah, drank the ceremonial blood drink with Masai and been rescued from a charging elephant by Pygmys in the Congo. Talking to these two guys was like watching an Indiana Jones movie!
Mark gave me a choice of his business cards with images from his work, lamenting that all the good ones were gone, but I got a mother elephant cuddling it’s young and that’s a great image.
One of the great things about Alex and Mark, who have seen so much of the world’s diverse wildlife, is the reverence with which they hold it. Having seen the most fragile and the most robust species of animals, their over riding purpose is to get people to see the fragility of the planet and to wake up to our overpowering influence. By showing these creatures, we get to know them. When we get to know them, we get to like them. When we like them, we want to protect them. And we have to protect them, especially now.
So this was one of the greatest adventures I have ever had. I spent 11 days with a BBC Wildlife camera crew filming hummingbirds in Alaska. That’s my dream vacation!
I had sent up nesting balls for people to put out to enrich the nesting area for the hummingbirds and to see if there was any nesting action. We had a report of nesting activity a few days before we arrived by Don and Darcy so we went right there to look when we arrived. I set up the camera and upon review of the tape, saw quite a nice Rufous female pulling nest material off the ball. I watched that bird for a day, but given the impenetrable forest, decided to move to our next place, the Arboretum.
It was a city arboretum located a few miles out of Juneau and was home to a wide variety of plants in a beautiful public garden kind of way. Kelly and Meryl crafted it into a beautiful showcase of natural and imported plants, like primroses. It was a beautiful spot right on the water and it was home to about 4 or 5 hummingbirds and a sapsucker. It turns out that hummingbirds follow sapsuckers sometimes and feed at the sap wells that the sapsuckers drill into trees. It’s one of the ways that hummingbirds survive up here.
There were not many hummingbirds at the Arboretum, and I searched an entire two days in the woods and only heard one. Mark was set up to film them at a feeder but he was only getting one an hour. Finding a nest seemed doubtful.
Then we got a call from Anisa who told us that she had a lot of hummingbirds at her house. I went to investigate. Her balcony overlooked Gastineau Channel and offered a great view of Douglas island. Her balcony was about 10 ft by 30 feet faced south. And there were hummingbirds!!! More hummingbirds then I had seen since Costa Rica. Now we had a chance to find a nest and film some birds! I set up a nest ball and when we all arrived the next morning, it was nearly picked apart. Birds were flying in from deep in the rainforest to feed here and now, to get nesting material. I set out to find one. The forest consisted mostly of very tall mossy Hemlocks and Sitka Spruce. Lichen and moss covered all the branches and the ground. Trees and branches had fallen on this ground for millenniums and it showed. Many places, the moss hid deep holes or rotting wood which would grab my leg and pull me down. This was going to be hard. I tried to follow the direction of the birds from the nestball, but I could only follow them for 50 ft before losing them to the trees. I tried to find lower ground cover, like alder or ocean spray, with mixed success. Devil’s club covered most of the ground in devious ways. Devil’s club is a spiny plant that stretches long tendrils with spikes that whip up when you step on them. To top it off, the barb on their thorn has some kind of hook and toxin that causes things to stay under your skin and fester till you give in a dig it out with a needle.
Finally on the fourth day I found a nest. I was elated! I proudly showed Alex and Mark and set up the camera to monitor and see Mama. Unfortunately she didn’t show up. It was a new nest, not stretched out or weathered, but after a couple of days of hoping, I took a look and saw there were no eggs. They had probably been eaten by some other bird. Crestfallen, I continued looking. I tried everything, listening, watching nest balls, following and just plain walking in the woods hoping to randomly come upon one. I knew they were nesting, I saw them picking nest material. I never did find another. I think the large majority of them nest high in the trees. Also, the Rufous is a very quiet bird compared to the Anna’s that I am used to. They are migratory, instead of resident so they don’t seem to set up territories. They just seem to pull into town and set up camp. There was very little squabbling to be heard. Plus, I think the Rufous is overall a quieter bird.
Instead we focused on the story of the hummingbirds following sapsuckers. Hummingbirds in Alaska sometimes survive by eating the sap from wells created by Sapsuckers. This is a very valuable food source for them when the weather is cold and flowers are not around. In order to tell that story, Mark and Alex set up stumps on a table on Anisa’s balcony to mimic trees and designed a path for the hummingbirds to follow to get to the feeder. It’s like they had to run a maze to get their sugar fix.
Mark and Alex’s standards are amazing. Mark would shoot all day for 5 seconds of film. He told me once he trekked for 5 weeks through the Congo to capture 3 minutes of chimpanzee behavior.
Their cameras cost in the upper 5 digits and can be set to record up to 10 seconds prior so you can wait for the action to happen before you have to push record.
Everything is shot at frame rates like 1000 per second or 1500 per second and the clarity is amazing. Even on a sunny day, you would see Mark with a fill light positioned on his lap to make sure it was the richest image he could create.
On our last day, we had a treat by a sapsucker. Having followed directions to a sapsucker tree which long time naturalist, Bob Armstrong told Alex about, we found the friendliest sapsucker. He came around every 30 minutes and by the end of the day, we were able to be within 10 feet of it and it paid us no mind. It stayed around so long that Mark has year`s worth of footage should the need for sapsucker footage come up.
It was a great experience for me and I learned a lot. I am a richer person for having met Alex and Mark.
A lot has happened.
April 29
Instead of writing all the stuff I should write, like all about Flower, Polly and Nate, I’m just going to give you an over view of what has happened lately. I got some attention for the web cam and got quite a few viewers thanks to Kirk and Lee. I kind of went viral for 15 minutes across Canada anyway.
Flower Polly and Nate are doing very well. They are developing a lot faster then Wind and Rain did when the weather was so cold. http://youtu.be/wuvE3pHllPg http://youtu.be/k2CwqHfe9rM http://youtu.be/wamh6BTBgVQ http://youtu.be/9iGyBviFapo
Flower’s previous chicks, Wind and Rain are out on their own now. I saw Rain the other day. She is easy to recognize because of the rather bare patch on her chest. She has moved out of the back yard and into the front area. She feeds off the balcony feeder and not the ones in the backyard anymore. She was being allowed to feed there by Flower. Wind was last seen feeding at the flowers in the front too. Meanwhile, in Hummingbird Hills, Alice has another nest right above the path again, Coral has a nest with a couple of eggs, Glory has two chicks, Halley and Louya. And they fledged when I was able to film them. Watch the videos and you will see them through to being fairly independant. http://youtu.be/mSW46GAjYLM http://youtu.be/xuzBrl2WkMc http://youtu.be/tlXe2z3VSao http://youtu.be/KfhD_yax5bM http://youtu.be/tAJA0ME3eLk http://youtu.be/NW_a67bzz9s http://youtu.be/bmgwMpqbBtU I had found Rose’s nest but it was on a thick branch and I think a Squirrel ran though it so that didn’t work out. I also found another nest with an abandoned egg in it. There is a nest in the crown of the Ocean Spray and another in the Fir tree about 50 ft up.
Weaver has two chicks hatched about Apr 15 http://youtu.be/W_-TvOHHCNk
Coral has a couple of eggs. http://youtu.be/edVas9w5GPA
Alice is sitting on two eggs above the walking path. http://youtu.be/gwa1UZxOXpM
That’s a lot of nests, eh?
The mortality rate was a lot higher when the weather was colder. Out of the six that I watched earlier in the year, only two made it through to fledging. And even then the chicks weren’t that healthy. You can see from Halley and Louya what a difference the weather makes on their development. Compare them with Wind and Rain which Fledged in early March, and you can see that Halley and Louya have a much better chance at survival.
This crop of chicks will fledge sooner and be healthier.
How I find a hummingbird nest
How to Find a Hummingbird Nest
I get asked a lot how I find hummingbird nests. The answer is kind of simple. It takes patience and you have to listen and watch closely. I was sitting on a high point in Hummingbird Hills today just listening for the different birds to find out where they were. I had already found another nest this morning when I was able to zero in on one who’s territory I had been watching. I figured the next time I thought I was close to a nest, I would try to capture on camera the process and sounds that tell me there is a nest nearby. It’s rare that I am able to do that, but today I felt lucky. Soon, I saw a hummingbird hunting for bugs a bit downhill from where I was sitting so I moved closer. The bird was going from shrub to shrub picking up bugs for food and then it would disappear and re-emerging a minute later wiping it’s beak on a branch. That’s a sure sign of feeding her young. They often wipe their beaks on branches after feeding. I kept moving closer to where I felt the bird was centered in the bush and pretty soon it turned it’s attention to me. That is where the video starts. http://youtu.be/nhEfT-d0FKw You can watch it and see what I saw. What is hard to see is the very last part of her flight because she moves so rapidly that the camera can’t really see where she is going. I could though, and soon I found her nest. Listen for the type of sounds she makes and watch her flight patterns. How do I find a hummingbird nest? I let the bird show me where it is.
Wind is doing great!
Wind, Rain’s healthier sibling is doing his best to stay out of the camera lens. I caught him zipping around our flower bed yesterday with a snootful of pollen. He rested in the plum tree for a while and let me photograph him a bit and then went right back to doing what hummingbirds do best.
Sticking their beaks into every flower they see. He is quite agile and appears to have no trouble flying at all. I got a good look at his feathers and they are much more developed then Rain’s.
Meanwhile, Rain has taken up residence in our backyard and makes frequent trips to the feeder. I have seen her snapping at flies as they come close, but I haven’t seen her catch one yet. That doesn’t mean that she hasn’t, just that I haven’t seen her do it. Flower has stopped feeding her now, as her current eggs near hatching, but I did see Flower giving a fly catching demonstration for Rain over our neighbor’s compost pile. Rain sat in a branch while Flower zipped around chattering and snatching flies out of the air not 4 ft from Rain. Rain’s a quick learner and I think she got it.
Helping Rain
April 4
Rain hasn’t clued in that she can feed herself yet and Flower’s feedings are few and far between after 10 days. She was peeping all day so I decided to give her a break and show her the glass flower feeder and see what she does. She hasn’t made the connection yet about food coming from anywhere except Mom. Once the flower is within reach, she gets it immediately and has a good drink. http://youtu.be/A0AaE1wSBI8 Perhaps this will help and she will fly over to the real feeder which is only about 10 ft away. I placed the flower feeder close to her so she could get to it. Here she is happily sucking up a snootful of sugar juice. http://youtu.be/kv1vVax6M-Y I have seen Flower flying back and forth from feeder to Rain to show her where food comes from. Rain just hasn’t made the connection. I was very relieved when I came home from work to discover Rain gorging herself at the regular feeder. Here she is just finishing up. She has figured out how to feed herself and she’s going to be OK. http://youtu.be/i7u-7Wmtie8