From the Facebook page City Wildlife, out of Washington, D.C., comes this photo of a baby rubythroat about to be rescued:
Meet our smallest rehab patient- a baby ruby-throated hummingbird! (We held up a penny for size comparison!) It was brought into City Wildlife after falling from its nest. This baby is so small and delicate that it needs to be fed a few drops of nectar every 15 minutes! Because they are so fragile, hummingbirds typically do not do very well in rehab so the best thing to do if you find an orphaned baby is to try and reunite it with its parents.
If you have an American penny, pull it out to see how small this bird is.
h/t: Amy
I always keep a U.S. penny handy, for exactly this purpose.
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😀 You’re hilarious!
I’m reminded of the sex education pamphlet we were provided at university, which included a photo of variety of contraceptive devices with “a 50p coin for scale”.
It became a thing in student publications to include “a condom for scale” in photos of other things. (In its foil packet!)
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Oh wow, poor little thing. I hope it’s going to be okay.
Cool! We have lots of these! I’ve never seen a baby one though. They took a dive a few years ago when West Nile virus swept through; but they seem to be back now.
Poor cute little bird. I saw what I thought was a juvenile ruby throat at my feeder a couple of days ago because it was just slightly smaller than regular sized hummies. It is possible that 1) I imagined it 2) It was just a runt
I think it is extra sad if you see a hummingbird dead. I saw one dead at work once laying on the walkway. I think it must’ve smacked into the big windows. They are so pretty and delicate.
In general, altricial birds (those that are born featherless and blind and raised in a nest till fledging) are as large as their parents when they fledge. In fact they often look larger, with fresh feathers & still some fluffy down to shed.
(Precocial birds, those whose chicks are up and walking soon after hatching, are of course tiny when they leave the nest.)
In most species there is some variation of size around the average length; I suppose hummingbird runts are possible, though there’s not much leeway for downsizing one would think. 😀
Yeah, I probably imagined it.
I always feel guilty when hummingbirds come around trying to find a way to extract nectar from my tail light lenses. Maybe I should cover them up, I feel like some kind of fraud maybe a mormon.
I feel fortunate that a rubythroat was the first hummingbird I ever saw, such a lovely bird.
I had a hummingbird nest in a shrub in front of my house this spring. Their eggs are the size and shape of somewhat oversized jelly beans, sitting in a tiny cup carefully camouflaged with bits of lichen and bark. Very easy to overlook!
Sadly, mom abandoned the nest after the eggs failed to hatch.
I don’t know if it was a rufous or an Anna’s hummingbird.
There’s not much to hummingbirds. Think of them as flying dust bunnies. A cat I used to have was fast enough that he could lie under a clump of Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ (which h.birds love) and just jaw them as they flew by. He’d come in making his “I have prey” call, I’d chase him down and remove a slightly soggy, uninjured hummingbird from his mouth, take it outside and release it. Flying dust bunnies, indeed, but very indignant at being cat- and manhandled.
More power to the fine people trying to bring this little bird to adulthood.
I wish the rufous ones were around here. We only have the ruby throats & I saw a bunch of rufous ones in BC once in a park.
Years ago, I too had a hummingbird nest in the backyard, with two eggs. It was on a low, “J”-shaped branch, about head-high. The nest was about the size of half a tennis ball, and those tiny eggs!! What was incredible to observe was the small size of the eggs, and the resulting much larger chicks…seemingly UMpossible!!
I cannot recall if one or both chicks fledged, but the feeding was nowheres close to every 15 minutes. And the rainy weather…it was amazing that this hummingbird propagation episode transpired successfully.
The next time any all y’all’re in Sedona, the state park on the south side of town has some hummingbird feeders up where you’ll be mobbed by basically all the species in the Southwest.
And, down in Tucson, on the west side of town is the botanical museum where they’ve got a walk-in hummingbird aviary. Those birds like to use hat brims as perches.
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Wow, some time we’ll have to see those!
Have you read: “A Hummingbird in My House” by Arnette Heidcamp? or “Rosie: My Rufous Hummingbird”? or “Humminbirds: My Winter Guests”? Fascinating experiences at her home in Saugerties, New York.
I recently heard the question “How small can dinosaurs get?” This post is the answer.
Bee Hummingbird
Was sitting outside with my dog and a bird landed on the fench and starting singing. We both looked at the bird was wondering if he was asking for bread or laughing at the dog saying you can’t catch me. He did it for ahwile and was so cute.