The return of Heather the hummingbird

It’s a miracle! She’s back! Heather the hummingbird is back!

I’m talking about the little hummingbird who whirred into town one day and started threading together a perfect egg cup nest on a dangling branch right outside my bedroom window. I tried to be discreet as she wove away and finally wiggled her little butt into place and settled in. All was well until the night (OK, 3 am) when I tried to take a dozen collected Foster’s Lager cans to the garbage. They slipped out of my arms and went CLANGITY CLANG CLANGING on the path. Naturally, come daylight, she was gone.

I’ve been mourning her ever since, looking every day at the abandoned nest. She even came back and pulled out a few grass blades to take to some other nest. Finally, I accepted it. Like losing a lover who’s over you. I stopped looking. I got on with my life.

Until last week. This was months later, but I heard that whirrr, whirrr, and dzik, dzik, dzik.

I swear it’s her. She’s back, and repairing. She weaves and weaves then wiggles her butt into place and settles in, like nothing ever happened. Did she have a set of babies? Is this the next? Is it her? What should I do? I get back online.

First of all, she’s no dummy. “Hummingbirds are the among the smallest warm-blooded animals in the world,” says this article in the Washington Post, but “they have the largest brains for their body size of all birds.” Like Monarch butterflies, many hummingbirds migrate from the Pacific Northwest all the way to Mexico. They can fly 500 miles in a single flight. They need the nectar of 2000 flowers per day, or the equivalent, to sustain them.

Yeah yeah. But I’m looking for baby info. I find answers on morebirds.com. How often do they have babies? One to three broods each year. Usually two eggs each time. How big are the eggs? The size of a coffee bean. How long to hatch? Fifteen to eighteen days. A bit longer if the weather is cold. They’re born naked and blind, and stay that way for their first nine days. Mom has to keep them at 96 degrees, so she can leave only for a few minutes to find nectar and insects. (Good news for humans: hummers eat mosquitoes, spiders, caterpillars, aphids, flies’ eggs — lots of things we don’t like.) But the chicks need to eat every 20 minutes. So we’re talking a busy mom. Babies stay in the nest three weeks.

Now all I can do is wait, and keep my cans quiet. Man, I hope she has them. I’m like a first-time father being given a second chance. I’m instructing all neighbors not to yell, toot, laugh, slam the gate. And no looky-loo looking. I can’t wait.

PS: Why “Heather?” “Heather the Hummingbird” just seems to roll off the tongue. And rhymes with “Heather, light as a feather.”