My Hummingbird Neighbors IV - Welcome Back II
First, I check my last year's photos, of course there was no way that I could tell if it was the same hummingbird mother. But I realized that it was exactly the same date- May 20th that I took first a couple photos of the baby birds last year. What an interesting coincidence!
So, I watched them more carefully, found out many differences between those two mother birds. This year's would rest on the potato tree, and spend a lot of time cleaning her feathers. I didn't think that she fed her babies as frequent as the last one did. Even the babies behaviors were quite different too. Like mother, like children! They started to clean their feathers in such a crowed nest, one already flipped its wings, and would stand on the edge of the nest more often. The most funny thing I saw that the baby birds pushed their poos out of the nest, squirting into the air. Last year, the baby birds only sat in the nest, sleeping or waiting for being fed, the mother's calling was louder.
I am an artist, not a scientist. I don't know that I can prove if they were different hummingbird mothers. But I didn't want to miss such a great opportunity, so I kept our window open, captured many photos of the baby birds and the mother feeding babies. This mother seemed unbothered by the camera and the shutter clicks. Not like the last one, who was very cautious and stopped feeding, hiding away and coming back to check my window area. etc... Can this be one of the baby hummingbirds from last year out of the same nest? It made sense to me, after a one year journey, she had become a mother, coming back to her home location to raise her own babies. She was familiar with the camera already from her memory... At the same time, I didn't want to think about what might have happened to the last year's mother...?
Baby hummingbirds grow so fast, only one week after I took the first photo, I thought the baby birds knew me already. So I used one of the branches from the tree try to pull them a little bit closer, but one baby flew away from the nest. The next day, second baby left too. I worried so much, and I felt terrible about myself... but I spotted the mother feeding one of them on our neighbor's Japaneses maple tree, I felt more relieved!
Why the baby birds didn't landed on the maple trees nearby our fences this year? The newly moved-in family next door neighbor of the one behind us has three cats. They often climb on our fences, walking around. One morning, I saw the mother hummingbird resting and cleaning her feathers on the single bare branch of the potato tree over our fence, I grabbed my camera, took a couple of images and waiting for the perfect moment... suddenly, one cat jumped on the fence, scared the bird away, and she never rested there anymore...
Because of the cats, I didn't get a chance to see the mother training her babies like I witnessed last year. I still do enjoy this watching experience. Please welcome back again, I can't wait...
Related stories at:
My Hummingbird Neighbors I - An Abandoned Nest http://originalartstories.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-hummingbird-neighbor-i-abandoned.html
My Hummingbird Neighbors II - Watching the babies grow http://originalartstories.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-hummingbird-neighbors-ii-watching.html
My Hummingbird Neighbors III - An Awarded Single Mother http://originalartstories.blogspot.com/2012/07/my-hummingbird-neighbors-iii-awarded.html
My Hummingbird Neighbors IV - Welcome Back
http://originalartstories.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-hummingbird-neighbors-iv-welcome-back.html
Or visiting my Photography Gallery - Animals And People Art at:
http://xueling-zou.artistwebsites.com/art/all/photography+-+animals+and+people/all
So, I watched them more carefully, found out many differences between those two mother birds. This year's would rest on the potato tree, and spend a lot of time cleaning her feathers. I didn't think that she fed her babies as frequent as the last one did. Even the babies behaviors were quite different too. Like mother, like children! They started to clean their feathers in such a crowed nest, one already flipped its wings, and would stand on the edge of the nest more often. The most funny thing I saw that the baby birds pushed their poos out of the nest, squirting into the air. Last year, the baby birds only sat in the nest, sleeping or waiting for being fed, the mother's calling was louder.
I am an artist, not a scientist. I don't know that I can prove if they were different hummingbird mothers. But I didn't want to miss such a great opportunity, so I kept our window open, captured many photos of the baby birds and the mother feeding babies. This mother seemed unbothered by the camera and the shutter clicks. Not like the last one, who was very cautious and stopped feeding, hiding away and coming back to check my window area. etc... Can this be one of the baby hummingbirds from last year out of the same nest? It made sense to me, after a one year journey, she had become a mother, coming back to her home location to raise her own babies. She was familiar with the camera already from her memory... At the same time, I didn't want to think about what might have happened to the last year's mother...?
Baby hummingbirds grow so fast, only one week after I took the first photo, I thought the baby birds knew me already. So I used one of the branches from the tree try to pull them a little bit closer, but one baby flew away from the nest. The next day, second baby left too. I worried so much, and I felt terrible about myself... but I spotted the mother feeding one of them on our neighbor's Japaneses maple tree, I felt more relieved!
Why the baby birds didn't landed on the maple trees nearby our fences this year? The newly moved-in family next door neighbor of the one behind us has three cats. They often climb on our fences, walking around. One morning, I saw the mother hummingbird resting and cleaning her feathers on the single bare branch of the potato tree over our fence, I grabbed my camera, took a couple of images and waiting for the perfect moment... suddenly, one cat jumped on the fence, scared the bird away, and she never rested there anymore...
Because of the cats, I didn't get a chance to see the mother training her babies like I witnessed last year. I still do enjoy this watching experience. Please welcome back again, I can't wait...
Related stories at:
My Hummingbird Neighbors I - An Abandoned Nest http://originalartstories.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-hummingbird-neighbor-i-abandoned.html
My Hummingbird Neighbors II - Watching the babies grow http://originalartstories.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-hummingbird-neighbors-ii-watching.html
My Hummingbird Neighbors III - An Awarded Single Mother http://originalartstories.blogspot.com/2012/07/my-hummingbird-neighbors-iii-awarded.html
My Hummingbird Neighbors IV - Welcome Back
http://originalartstories.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-hummingbird-neighbors-iv-welcome-back.html
Or visiting my Photography Gallery - Animals And People Art at:
http://xueling-zou.artistwebsites.com/art/all/photography+-+animals+and+people/all
