My Favorite Bird Nests, Part II

One of my favorite activities is observing bird behavior, particularly courtship and nesting. It is always a thrill to watch a bird select nesting material, then take it back to the nest. We’ll examine some of that behavior in greater detail in a future post. Today I want to complete the list of my favorite bird nests. (Click here for the first five nests.)

Bell’s vireo: This small, shy bird with an outsized voice builds one of the most amazing nests I’ve seen in person. Like a hummingbird nest, it is a tightly woven cup, with decorations on the outside. But unlike most hummer nests, the Bell’s vireo nest is actually a hanging basket, attached to a tree at two points.

Last year, a Bell’s vireo built her nest shoulder high and right by a walking trail at Tohono Chul Park. As you can see below, this nest is beautifully made. I am unable to imagine how a little bird, using only her beak and her feet, could create something so beautiful and elaborately wrought. So many people gathered to watch and photograph this nest that she sadly abandoned it, with one egg having been laid.

This year, we had two Bell’s vireo nests in different parts of the Park, both high above the trails. Each of these nests fledged at least two broods of chicks.

Bell’s nest in Texas Ebony

 

Bell’s nest in Olive Tree

 Hummingbirds: Most years we have several hummingbird nests at Tohono Chul, many of them easily observable. These tiny nests are very tightly woven, but stretchable, allowing the baby hums to grow. When the nests in a hummingbird aviary at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum began falling apart, it was discovered that the material needed to hold them together was spider silk. Spiders were added to the aviary, solving the problem.

The following hummingbird nests were photographed at Tohono Chul. I don’t know the species, but they are Anna’s, Costa’s, or Black-chinned. (For more on these species, see My Hummingbirds.)

I think this mama is a Costa’s.

Waiting for mom to bring food…

       They grow up so fast… these little guys are ready to fledge.

Cactus wren:  The cactus wren, the State Bird of Arizona, is one of the best nesters around. Their nests are large, messy, enclosed structures often decorated with odd bits of debris. Cactus wrens are known for building multiple nests, perhaps as decoys, though no one knows for sure. A cactus wren with nesting material in its beak is a very common sight in the Sonoran Desert.

Typical cactus wren nest, decorated with what looks like tissue paper and fiber-fill. When I’ve left lengths of colored yarn outside, cactus wrens often incorporated them into their nests.

This wren and its partner built this nest and another nearby. For a short video of the process, click here.

Technorati Tags: Bird nests,Bell's vireo nests,hummingbird nests,cactus wren nests

My hummingbirds

When I first moved back to Tucson more than twenty years ago, I knew almost nothing about hummingbirds. I didn’t know, for example, that they spend a great deal of time just perching, in between trips to flowers or the nectar feeder. I didn’t know that they eat a lot of insects (you have probably seen them doing this, even if you didn’t know that’s what it was—they hover in mid-air, making jerky movements as they snag microscopic bugs). I didn’t know that many of them migrate long distances—more than 2,000 miles—and over barriers as formidable as the Gulf of Mexico. And I had no idea that I would have so many species of hummers right in my own backyard.

As I wrote in the previous post on learning Arizona birds, I didn’t know one bird from another when I first arrived here. But hours in the backyard with binoculars and hummingbird books taught me to identify the six or seven species that eventually came to my tiny yard.

Male Costa’s hummingbird 

These included Anna’s, the most common; Broad-billed, the second most; and Costa’s, Rufous, Broad-tailed, and Black-chinned.

Male Anna’s hummingbird

I never did get very good at identifying female hummers, most of whom tend to look a lot alike, but I did get to know all the males. On this page are a few pictures of “my” hummers from those early years. In my next post I’ll introduce the three most memorable hummers to visit my yard.

Male Black-chinned hummingbird; not my photo

Technorati Tags: Hummingbirds,backyard birding,southwestern hummingbird species

A beautiful April day at Tohono Chul Park

Technorati Tags: wildflowers of the southwest,Tohono Chul Park,hummingbird nests,cacti of Southern Arizona

It’s getting warm, but everything at the Park is so beautiful. Baby birds, nests, young squirrel families, and flowers everywhere you look: wildflowers, flowering trees, cactus flowers…. you can’t help but smile.

                         New hummer mom

Ocotillo blossoms

 Perezia and Passionflower

Raspberry TrichocereusRose-colored prickly pear budStaghorn Cholla blooms

The Costa’s Brothers

Last September, I wrote about these two juvenile Costa’s hummingbirds who were uneasily sharing a feeder in our rose garden that hangs from a clothesline. This is such unusual hummer behavior that I thought they might be nest-mates who still shared a bond of sorts.
This week, a pair of full-grown Costa’s hummers were sharing the same clothesline and the same feeder. See the picture below. My speculation is even wilder: could these be the same two birds from last year, still traveling together and still “sharing” to the extent that a hummingbird can share?

The Big Chill

We have just gone through two of the coldest nights EVER in Tucson. Here’s my pond:

Here’s the poor dead hummingbird that succumbed to hypothermia yesterday:

There are a few hummers around today, fighting and feeding. I think my grapefruit tree is dead. It looks really awful. I can’t even bear to think about the hummingbirds out in the wild that have no source of nectar but frozen flowers. Sad, sad, sad.

Odd Hummingbird Behavior

Yesterday afternoon and this morning I saw something I’ve never seen before: two hummingbirds seemingly co-guarding one feeder. The feeder in question dangles from a clothesline in our small “rose garden,” a patio that is covered with shade cloth this time of year.
I believe they are juvenile Costa’s. Both are often on the clothesline together. Sometimes they seem to take turns drinking from the feeder. Sometimes one will display at the other. Sometimes one will chase the other. Once I saw them “dueling” with their beaks.  But most of the time they just sit there, checking out each other and the general area. Sometimes they sit several inches apart, as in the above photo, and sometimes they sit right next to each other—once about half an inch apart.
Here is my theory: I think they are nestmates, and there is some faint memory that keeps them from inflicting total mayhem on one another. They are obviously uneasy with the situation, but do accept it.
Other hummers have tried to horn in, but these guys so far have chased everyone else away.

Flying and landing

There has been an active Costa’s hummingbird nest in a small oak tree near the education building at the Park. Everyone’s been saying for days that the two baby hummers are just about ready to leave the nest.
Well, today was the day, and I got to watch! The first baby out was already on a branch about a foot from the nest when I got there:

I watched it practice flying to another nearby branch: no problem. But it hadn’t given much thought about how to land, and spent a few comical seconds madly hovering before it figured out it needed to be ABOVE the branch before settling down. It continued to practice flying and landing while its sibling stretched its wings. Then mom came along and fed the still-sedentary hummer:

A fun morning!

Spring this and that

We have a new five seasons garden at Tohono Chul Park. These lovely flowers are in the Spring Garden:
The pink ones are penstemons, tiny trumpet flowers. We have some at home. The other evening I watched (through the living room window) as a hummingbird worked the penstemons methodically, going from flower to flower, top to bottom of one stalk, then moving to the next stalk, bottom to top, and so on.
That same evening I watched the quails gather to roost… quite of lot of them. But then I got distracted by a bobcat in the yard. It just wandered around a little then headed for the wash in back of the house. I was thinking the quails didn’t seem too disturbed… until they started to fly out of the palo verde trees where they’d taken refuge.
Finally, the baby hummer raised by the mama (a Costa’s, I have had confirmed) in a previous post, has flown the nest. But I got his/her picture before he left:

Bird sex

It’s starting up… the male quails are doing their aggressive chest-bumping (which they must have learned from watching the NBA), cardinals seem to be paired off, all kinds of birds are flying around with nesting materials in their beaks.
At Tohono Chul Park, in a little gazebo in an undisclosed location, I photographed this lovely little mother hummingbird. I think she is a Costa’s but am not certain. Since I took the photo the eggs have hatched, and if I’m lucky I may get a picture of the babies.
Interesting bonus fact about hummingbird nests: they are elasticized with spider silk, which allows the nest to expand as the hatchlings grow.