close-up from a different angle, in the late afternoon sun

Mme W's second nest, filmed close-up from a different angle in the late afternoon sun at Calypso, Eleuthera. You can see that the breeze has picked up. As usual the nest is decorated with bits of lichen, just as on Long Island - but here there is very little lichen around, and I don't know where she finds it!

Close-up of Mme W on, and leaving, the nest.

I managed to get a bit closer without disturbing her - about 10 feet away. I'm also using a tripod so the movement you see is entirely due to the wind, which is not strong today. Mme W's last nest was wrecked by a combination of days of rain and powerful winds, which caused the branch not merely to sway, but to whip around. I'm sure that the current branch will sway a lot too, but we are unlikely to get prolonged rain - we are now well into the dry season, and indeed it has not rained significantly for 6 weeks. The major difficulties now will be that the gumbo limbo tree is starting to lose its leaves (which is always does in the dry season), eventually exposing the nest to the strong sun, and white-crowned pigeons loves the ripening fruit that undergird the nest.
At the end of the video she leaves the nest, as she does periodically. She takes off extremely rapidly - the clip is shot in real time, which is why you can hear faint background sounds, mainly the relatively clam ocean. I'll try to get some slo-mo shots of her arriving or leaving. Meanwhile here's a 4X slo-mo version of the current video.

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.

Calypso Garden Movie

I've put together a short movie of Calypso garden scenes. Some of these clips will be familiar to my more dedicated viewers. It's very much a work in progress!

Calypso Rainbow

Sorry for the long silence - I've been busy with a family visit (9 extra people!). This evening a striking rainbow over the ocean here at Calypso.  Of course it was raining a bit and toward the end of the video a droplet lands on the camera lens.

Hummer feeding at red powderpuff

One of the prettiest hummingbird plants here at Calypso is red powderpuff (Calliandra hematocephala). The flowers looks rather like those of our Long Island Pink Powderpuff "Albizia julibrissin" which is also attractive to hummers, but are red, and the plant is a bush not a tree. If I sit near this for a few minutes a hummer is sure to soon visit the flowers. In this video initially there's a yellow butterfly on the flower, but it's quickly chased away by the hummer.

Here's another clip, at a different flower, and 4X slo-mo.

From my seat near this bush I can also see this view:

One can see the red flowers of a hibiscus, and on the right the massive trunk of a royal palm. A foxtail palm is in the background.and there are yellow butterflies flitting around. Royal palms are my favorite tree (together with live oaks, which do not grow here) and you will be seeing more of them - I have quite a collection at Calypso. Here's another nearby garden scene, with pink and red hibiscus, white bridal bouquet frangipani, and in the background Casuarina glauca (a suckering type of casuarina that unlike the much more common, and highly invasive,  Casuarina equisetifolia, does not produce the annoying seeds, and is more attractive, with darker, denser foliage.

Last LaLa photo;

This is whatI believe to be the last photo of LaLa, taken on wednesday jan 20 before the blizzard of jan 22/23. It was taken by the MaryLaura Lamont, an expert birder with a particular knowledge of hummingbirds. She confirms that LaLa is no longer around at the sanctuary. My heartfelt thanks to her and everyone else who worked hard to protect LaLa

Feeding Wintering Hummingbirds; RIP LaLa

LaLa at the end of december. Photo by Kent Gomez

I'm a member of an interesting "List Serve" email group that focusses mainly on hummingbirds in the south-east. Chuck Reinsch recently posted there some "Thoughts on Winter Feeding of Hummingbirds" written by Wally Davis. I'm reproducing here these "thoughts" (without their permissions, for which I apologize) because they seem relevant to LaLa's fate. Although Chuck thinks this approach to winter feeding is mistaken, I'm not so sure. I've written before about hummingbirds' need for protein, via insects, and in lieu of living flying insects some dietary protein supplement seems sensible. In any case, I find Wally's thoughts to be well-reasoned and interesting:-

"Many years ago as a graduate student in zoology at UC Berkeley, I studied hummingbird behavior using both wild and captive birds as subjects.  Species I studied included Anna's (Calypte anna), Black-chin (Archilochus alexandri), Allen's (Selasphorus sasin), and Rufous (Selasphorus rufus).  Most of the time I kept my captive hummingbirds in an 8' x 8' by 8' outdoor enclosure sheathed in window screen.

Rather than feed simple sugar syrup, I fed a mixture containing sugar, vitamin drops, protein, and other nutrients.  In addition, I maintained a colony of fruit flies and a couple of times a week would release a large quantity of them into the hummingbird cages.  It was amazing to watch the action when the fruit flies were released.  All of the hummingbirds took to wing and deftly plucked the fruit flies out of the air or any surface they happened to land on.  The fruit flies didn't stand a chance and were quickly devoured.  Using this approach I kept my captive hummingbirds healthy for over a year and even fledged and raised two Allen's hummingbirds which I collected in order to study learned vs. instinctive feeding behavior.

In 1999 I moved to Snohomish, WA where I put up a bird feeder, hung blocks of suet and, of course, hummingbird feeders.  Many Rufous hummingbirds visited from spring to mid-summer and even nested in the shrubs on my property, but I didn't see my first Anna's hummingbird until 2011.  By 2013 they became year-round residents and were breeding on my property.  When the Anna's showed up I maintained a 4:1 sugar syrup all winter.  When temperatures dropped below the mid 20s I kept the food from freezing with a ball of small Christmas lights.  As a few years passed, I observed that there were fewer birds in late winter than in early winter.  Two possible reasons for this are that the birds leave and go somewhere else or they do not survive.  Because little natural food is available in the winter, I believe it is unlikely that the birds leave.  It is important to note that, once you attract hummingbirds for the winter, you must keep it up even if you are out of town or the birds may starve.

Both of my birding books from the 1960s, Peterson's A Field Guide to Western Birds (1961) and Robbins, Bruun and Zim's Birds of North America (1966), placed the north end of the range of the Anna's hummingbird in California.  Since that time they have moved north as residents more than 400 miles.  According to the National Audubon Society, winter feeding and home gardens have probably supported this movement (http://birds.audubon.org/birds/annas-hummingbird).

While sugar syrup may be fine to attract wild hummingbirds during the summer, it is not a sufficient diet for captive hummingbirds or, in my opinion, wild hummingbirds lured by feeding to stay in cold climates north of their native range.  While normal winter mortality will cause loss of some birds, I believe the winter diet likely contributes to a reduction in overall fitness. In the near absence of insects and spiders, their primary source of protein and other nutrients is largely missing.  Imagine what it would do to our health if we consumed mostly sugar water with just an occasional nutritionally rich food for 3 or 4 months.

In late 2014 I changed my winter feeding program soon after the first frost; a time when I expect the availability of insects and spiders to be greatly reduced.  At first I tried to replicate the formula I used as a graduate student but found the ingredients are no longer available.  One of the ingredients I did use was baby formula and, consequently, reviewed the nutrients in all of the baby formulas I could find.  Eventually I selected Gerber Good Start gentle as my supplement.  A key reason for this choice is that whey protein is the first ingredient.  Most baby formulas on the shelves at my grocery store use soy protein which is of vegetable rather than animal origin.  The formula also contains a good selection of vitamins and other nutrients.

The recipe on the Gerber can calls for "1 unpacked level scoop (8.9g)" per 2 ounces of water.  Given the high quantity of sugar needed to maintain body temperature, I was concerned that feeding at this rate would provide too much protein and, consequently, settled on 1 level scoop per 8 ounces of 4:1 sugar syrup.  The instructions also say that you can refrigerate for up 24 hours and discard unused formula after 1 hour.  While this level of caution may be reasonable for infants, I have not found it to be necessary for hummingbird food.  I typically mix up 8 ounces at a time then put 2 ounces in each of two small feeders placed fairly far apart (hummingbirds don't like to share).  The Anna's hummingbirds which are using my feeders consume this quantity of food in about 3 days.  In cold weather there is no sign of spoilage of the food outside.  After a week in the refrigerator it still tastes and smells as fresh as when it was made up.  As the weather warms up I will probably change the food more often and, when I see insects I will switch back to just sugar water.

At the end of last winter it appeared to me that there were as many Anna's hummingbirds as at the beginning.  This gives me confidence that there isn't a downside to adding baby formula; it also gives me one subjective data point that the formula I use promotes winter survival.  Time will tell whether this pattern continues in the future.  At least I can feel confident that I am providing the hummingbirds with a more nutritious diet then they would otherwise be able to obtain, and they will hopefully be healthier coming out of winter."

Is it possible that LaLa became weakened by lack of protein and would have survived with Wally's formula?

Internet back up. New vids.

After 8 days down, internet is back on here, and I can start shooting new video. There are plenty of the local hummingbirds around (the Bahama Woodstar) and here is one (young male, or a female) visiting the tubular orange-red flowers of the Geiger tree, Cordia sebestena. 2X slo-mo

And here is an adult male perched on the tip of a branch of a frangipani (or plumeria) tree. These trees are leafless at this time of year, and there's a large one just outside our living room window. It will be covered in gorgeous yellow flowers in may. It's a bit blurry because it was filmed through the window screen.

Still no LaLa sightings

According to https://www.facebook.com/bhhummingbird there are now 2 reports that LaLa is not around post-storm.
I still have no regular internet access so other postings will be minimal for the moment.