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Community Corner

Lakeside Family Making Feathered Friends with a Hummingbird Family

Folks online can get a rare close-up look at a hummingbird family.

They flit, they fly, they snip, they scold, those jeweled birds. The most acrobatic of all feathered fliers, hummingbirds, have already begun their nesting season.

several types of hummingbirds. At a Lakeside apartment building, an Anna’s Hummingbird has made her home sweet home.

Annette Starnes, a resident of Lakeside, giggles as the mother hummingbird, whom she calls Anna Humdinger, hovers in front of her face. The flying jewel then drinks from the feeder hanging on the Starnes’ patio.

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“It’s like she’s thanking me,” Starnes said.

Mrs. Humdinger flies off again to look for her two fledglings, Hover and Flutter.  Nearly two months ago, Anna Humdinger had built her nest the wind spinner hanging on the porch of the Starnes’ downstairs neighbor.

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Starnes is always . She can spot a nest a mile away. This one, however, was practically under her feet.

“I happened to be coming from the laundry room and saw this tiny nest just under the floor of my patio,” she said. “She continued to sit there on her eggs and come to drink from the feeder hanging on my porch.”

Sometimes Mrs. Humdinger seems to taunt the two cats that reside in the Starnes’ apartment. She will dart back and forth and then sit at the feeder, just inches from the cats’ wide-eyed faces.

The hummingbird is an Anna’s hummingbird, named after Anna Massena, who was the Duchess of Rivoli in the 1800s.

“I saw two tiny eggs in there for almost three weeks,” Starnes said, who kept a daily watch on the little family.

The eggs, which looked like Tic-Tac candies in the tiny cup-shaped nest, hatched on February 15.

The tiny birds had a warm home in their 50-cent piece-sized nest of spider webs, plant materials and even human hair.

“The babies did just fine in the wind and rain,” Starnes said.

Starnes and her husband and two sons the hummer float down to her little nest which she fashioned on top of a wind spinner.

“Look at that green stuff she lined all around her nest,” Starnes said.

The green ribbon-like material is actually lichen which the hummer had woven into the outside of the nest for camouflage. Such ingénue is typical of hummingbirds.

Starnes says she used to get a little worried when the mom hummingbird stays away for awhile, then felt relief when she saw her visiting neighbors’ feeders.

With hummingbirds, there is no need to worry about how they are tending to their families. The very reason Mrs. Humdinger stays away for awhile is to .

The recent rains were not necessarily something to worry over, according to Philip Pryde, a local birder who is also on the Silverwood Wildlife Sanctuary Committee.

“It’s the cold weather [that] is probably more of a hazard to the baby birds than the rain,” Pryde said. 

“If the mother can keep [the babies[ simultaneously warm and well fed, which is a tricky task, given that the male Anna’s do not participate in feeding the young, they may do all right,” he said. 

The report from the Starnes family is that the hummers-in-residence on their patio fared well over the cold spells during the past couple of weeks. According to Kenn Kaufman’s “Lives of North American Birds,” the fledglings will take their first flight within 18 to 23 days of their hatching. 

“Should this attempt to fledge the young fail, there’s a good chance [the mother] would try again,” Pryde said. “She might, or might not, use the same nest.” 

Within the last seven days, both Hover and Flutter have tried out their wings. Starnes had invited a couple of friends over to watch the babies perch on the nest.

“The babies were sitting up so high in the nest, I thought they were going to fall out,” Starnes said.

While Starnes was chatting with her friends, one of the babies suddenly took flight, its first.

“We were ecstatic,” said Starnes.

It is still hard to tell whether or not Hover is a male.

“But the green is showing strong on its back. And the baby is now able to hover, which is why we gave it that name.”

In its first flight, Hover went to the wall of the apartment building and clung there for a moment, with Anna zooming in nearby. Suddenly, Hover left the wall and headed towards the chain-link fence.

Anna came to check on Hover, trying to lead her baby back to the vicinity of the nest. Within a couple of hours, with the help of Starnes gently coaxing it back, Hover flew all the way to the potted tree on the Starnes’ patio.

Within a few days, Hover’s sibling, Flutter, took its first flight.

“Flutter hasn’t learned to hover yet, and it’s the littler of the two,” Starnes said.

Watching a hummingbird family grow up is one thing. But Annette Starnes has gained the trust of the Humdinger family, so much so that Anna Humdinger lets Starnes touch Hover and Flutter.

“Once I put my finger in front of Hover’s beak, and its little tongue reached out and licked my finger,” Starnes said.

For now, Anna Humdinger continues to feed her fledglings. Hover and Flutter could be flying the coop anytime soon, but the Starnes family is hoping the birds will come to visit with their own new families.

In the meantime, Anna could well have another clutch.

Anna’s hummingbirds are pretty much ‘the early birds’ when it comes to nesting. They do normally start nesting in February, but a few in the coastal lowlands can begin as early as late December, according to Phil Unitt’s “San Diego County Bird Atlas.”

 Hummingbirds are the smallest of the bird species found in the world. Their high metabolism requires a large food consumption to sustain daily life. They eat half their body weight in food daily. Their normal diet consists of insects and nectar.

“I mix a half cup of sugar to tow cups of warm water,” Starnes said. “I never use the formula they sell in stores.”

 The people at Project Wildlife would call Starnes’ decision a wise one. The store-bought formulas have additives and food color which can harm hummingbirds.

Anna’s Hummingbird is about 4 inches long, with a bronze-green back, a pale gray chest and belly, with a green rump. What stands out about the male is its crimson-red crown that sparkles in the sun as he turns his head.

Females and juvenile Anna’s are duller in color, with a green crown, a gray throat with some red markings, and a gray chest and belly.

To attract these flying jewels, simply hang a feeder of nectar and wait for the show to begin.

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