I tried not to be too concerned, but each time throughout yesterday afternoon that I stole glimpses of the frontyard hummingbird nest I didn’t see the mother, and by the time Susan got home from work I had sat for a full 20 minutes at the front porch spotting scope and was fretting over her absence.
I tried to keep in mind that as her chicks so quickly grew she would be forced to go on extended trips gathering food enough to keep them nourished, but still… I had never gone so many hours without seeing mom on her nest and while I tried to remain hopeful I couldn’t defeat a steadily building sense that maybe something bad had happened to her. I hate that I can so easily be subsumed by despair.
So you can imagine the sense of elation when, on my final check of the nest for the day, I found momma back and feeding her hungry youngsters. I rushed to get the camera to grab a photo through the scope, but by the time I returned she was gone and all I got was this substandard snap of one of the chicks’ suddenly gigantic head sticking up above the rim of the nest:
Look at the size of that thing. It was half that size yesterday!
In related news, all’s well at Hummingbird East, where I was able to get a frame of that momma on top of her two eggs grabbing a little nap:
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