Yesterday one of the hummingbirds ventured out of the nest! The other will soon follow.  Hummingbirds only lay two eggs and begin incubating right away, so one chick hatches first and is always a day ahead of the other. Today we will introduce miniature hummingbird feeders to the pair, however we will still hand feed them for a while as they get used to the idea of eating on their own. It is hard to believe that these little birds will make the long journey to Central America, non-stop over the Gulf of Mexico, when summer comes to a close!

The lump you can see on the neck in the top picture is the bird’s “crop” (a place in their esophagus where they store their food after they eat it and before they digest it.)

The hummingbirds at 16 days old…starting to get feathers!  Watch them feeding on our YouTube Channel.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 8:49 am and is filed under Nursery News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.