BASICS


BASICS: "Hummingbirds.....where is the person, I ask, who, on observing this glittering fragment of the rainbow, would not pause, admire, and turn his mind with reverence..." (J. J. Audubon).
This is a blog about my summer life at the Baiting Hollow Hummingbird Sanctuary, at my winter garden, Calypso, in the Bahamas, and aspects of life in general.
This private sanctuary is now permanently closed to the general public, as a result of a lawsuit brought by a neighbor. Only my friends and personal guests may visit (paul.adams%stonybrook.edu).

Friday, February 26, 2016

Mme W does not give up - new nest in same tree!


Mme W is a female Bahama Woodstar hummingbird at Calypso, Eleuthera. A month ago she started a nest in a gumbo limbo tree but after successfully hatching her eggs the nest was wrecked in a windstorm. However, she does not give up - in fact she's started a new nest in the same gumbo limbo tree, this time on the north side which should be a bit more sheltered. She's incubating the new batch of 2 eggs. This clip shows the 2 eggs in the nest while she was absent from the nest. The nest is about head height in the tree, so I have to bend the branch cautiously with one hand and hold the camera with the other, so I cannot film the whole inside of the nest. But there are 2 eggs there, each the size of a small pea.
I'm fairly sure this is Mme W again, because she's chosen a very similar spot in a different low-hanging branch of the same gumbo-limbo (properly called a gum elemi) as in january. This time the tree is heavily fruiting and she's built the nest on a bunch of these fruit - exactly the same as Gumbo did 2 years ago (in a different gum elemi tree). It's even possible that Mme W is Gumbo!

The next 2 videos show her sitting on the eggs, taken from 2 different viewpoints (I zoom out at the end to show the general setting).


In this clip I'm looking north towards our cottage "Sea Star", and sitting in the white and blue chair.


In this third clip, I'm looking south towards the nest, and zoom out to reveal the host tree and the white and blue chair I used for filming the previous clip, then pan to the west to show the reddish trunk of another gumbo limbo and also yellow elder flowers. Her nest is actually well concealed by leaves, but there are a few narrow gaps through which I can see the nest.

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