A Fun Change of Plans

I should have been getting ready for a HUGE yard sale today. But, I wasn't! I was playing with hummingbirds! So much fun!! My friend, Julia, called me this morning and asked if a graduate student could come and trap and band hummingbirds at our house as they hadn't had any luck at hers. Of course I said yes! What a fabulous experience! Claire set a simple trap made from light netting and a string and as the hummingbirds flew in to take a drink she slowly lowered the netting around them. It was interesting watching the little birds try to process this new development at their watering hole!

The hummingbird trap

Once the birds were in the net, Claire gently caught them in her hand and placed them in a small bag. In the bag, the birds could buzz their wings but couldn't really fly. The bag was just to keep the birds safe until Claire was ready to band their legs.

Can you even imagine the size of the bands necessary to use on a hummingbird? Teensy weensy! Before banding the birds, Claire weighed and measured them and checked for the amount of fat on their bodies. Their skin is see through! The fat shows up as yellow under the skin of the hummingbird. Very cool! I think she may have also recorded several other things but I'm not sure what else she was looking for. After that she'd place a tiny numbered band around the ankle of the bird and then released it.

Checking out the feathers

Dylan releasing a juvenile male Calliope hummingbird.

When you handle a hummingbird, you are supposed to lay it on its back because it confuses them. Sounds mean doesn't it! When you are ready to release the hummer you put it in this position as well and then when it realizes it's free, off it goes! Steve, Dylan and Lyndsi were as intrigued by the whole show as I was!

After a couple of hours at our house, I took Julia and Claire to a hummingbird nest some of my friends had found a couple of weeks ago. The eggs have hatched and Claire was hoping to band the babies. As it turns out, the babies were too little to be handled so we just watched the mama feed and warm them. The babies couldn't have been more than an inch and a half long and that mama shoved her beak right down their throats to give them their lunches! Baby hummingbirds look like big black maggots with a few feathers but boy were they cute! Did you know that hummingbirds eat insects as well as nectar and they feed their babies primarily insects? Something I learned today!

It's hard to see but there's a mama humming bird on her nest. If you look real closely, you can see her long beak sticking up in the air.

Unfortuately, I never got the whole story out of Claire as to what she was looking for. It has something to do with the migratory path of female Calliope hummingbirds and Claire will be back to this area to check again in a couple of weeks. I'm so glad she was so kind as to allow us to hang out with her today!

Look What Steve's Been Doing For Me!

He has taken off the popcorn ceiling, removed the dirty carpet, texturized and painted the ceiling, painted the walls and will be replacing the floor, putting in a new vanity and sink and remaking my bedroom into something I may never want to leave! We've never even painted the master bedroom in any house we've lived in so this is so much fun! Our room is unique in that the sink from the bathroom is in the bedroom. Rather than make our bedroom look so bathroomy, I bought a beautiful vessel sink and vanity. I hope it all turns out as pretty as I think it will!

Guess I should get a little sleep before the yard sale tomorrow. Yes, it's still on, despite my day of fun. I just won't be as organized or as rested as I was hoping I'd be!