Spring 2020
Even here in our small Central Florida town there's normally significant background noise. But it's been turned way down since March when we and most of the world settled in until a vaccine for Covid-19 becomes available. And during our sequester, sights and sounds in our own back yard that we might have missed in springs past have become discovered treasures - like the hummingbird that's chosen to build her nest here.
She caught our eye and ear in early May, gathering spider webs from a Sago palm outside of our window. We would listen for her tell-tale chitter and could watch where she took them, to the end of a low hanging oak branch not fifteen feet off our porch where over the course of the next two weeks she used them to glue tiny feathers and lichen and grass stems and moss and who know what else into a beautiful spiral, no bigger than a golf ball.
Directly below her sit two hummingbird feeders that she takes no interest in, rather making regular stops through the day at her favorite flowers - hibiscus, red salvia, yellow trumpet and a spreading mimosa that here in Central Florida is at about the most northern reach of its natural range.
We think we had a hatching on Mother's Day - hers as well as a family of wrens. They, being house wrens, argued vehemently each time we chased them out of the garage, but finally they settled on nesting in a potted house plant on the back deck. The cardinals also had new ones to feed and we watched that evening as our resident barred owl sat perched on a grape arbor, keeping his eyes on easy pickings of lubber grasshoppers and moles to pass by below him.
The rest of the birds were incensed. The wrens and cardinals sent up alarms which he seemingly ignored. But the boldest was the female hummingbird who darted at him like mockingbirds will chase off a hawk. He finally relented and moved to a different post as sun settled down. And for two more weeks she gathered more webs, more moss, in a spiral until a tiny beak and tail could be seen above the edge.
Through gusts of wind and early tropical rains, she tended her nest until we noticed two hummingbirds one morning in the hibiscus. One was quite small. It must have been testing its wings for a few days, trying out flowers in the mornings and returning to the nest in the afternoons where its mother would visit with something to tempt it. Then it was gone.
Like worried grandparents, we checked below to be sure it hadn't accidentally fallen. No sign, until today when we walked around the yard and there flew a tiny hummingbird - through the red salvia and hibiscus and up into the spreading mimosa, sure-winged and almost grown up!
