This is a touching YouTube video showing a man and his semi-tame hummingbird. The YouTube notes give this information:
João Silvestrini lives in barretos, Brazil. Has two hummingbird mother and child visiting your home. This video is 01/10/2014. João on message reports that this is the puppy, and makes one months that Mom hummingbird presented the child to Mr. João
Although we can’t see the bird very well, perhaps one of our readers with tropical experience can identify it.
A translation of what João says from the YouTube comments:
Hey, hey.
Come here.
Let’s film you here.
Here here.
Let’s talk here real close, look.
You seeing (it)?
There, look.
And, eh, come here, here now.
Come drink a little bit, eh?
Like that, look here, come here.
Come here, there (closer to ‘like that’), there. Look.
Let’s go to the camera again?
There, look!
Look there!
It’s filming, it’s filming.
Like that, sit on my finger, there there. You see? Like that.
Look there, without embarrassment he stays here the whole day calling me. He goes and (not sure about ‘rodea’, means turns but might be slang I’m not familiar with), it’s already been half an hour that I let him call me.
This is the little son. His mom introduced me to him here, and left him here in my window, on the porch (not really a porch, just kinda a small landing outside), and he’s accustomed to this. All the time he comes to call me here. All the time.
Eh? Yeah, like that. There, sit on my finger.
Come here! Come a little bit more, come here, sit here. Come, come.
There, a little bit more. Take advantage of the video here. See?
There. Like that. Drink there, very close to the camera there.
Don’t want any more, don’t want it? I’m gonna put it away. There, it’s put away. I leave it closed here, and he keeps (‘me rodeando’ again, literally translates to ‘turning me’) and calling and calling, so I get him/it (could be either here, no actual pronoun so vague), come here, and attend to him.
h/t: Michael~
I love the word for hummingbird in Portuguese: beija-flor “flower-kisser” 🙂
It reminds me of this video I saw four years ago. Make sure you read the full description. 🙂
Ooops, sub.
Double ooops, fortot to tick the box. Not enough sleep.
A quick Google search suggests it is the Swallow-tailed hummingbird, Eupetomena macroura. It is a real beauty, as shown
here.
At the Rocklands Bird Feeding Station near Anchovy, Jamaica (in the hills above Montego Bay), for many years the well-known Jamaican naturalist Lisa Salmon would allow visitors to sit quietly holding an airplane-liquor-bottle with a hole in the cap above their index fingers; Streamertail hummingbirds, or doctorbirds (Trochilus polytmus) woulkd sit on their fingers and feed from the bottles (not liquor, of course; I don’t know what Miss Salmon’s recipe was). Visiting scientists (including me on several occasions) often stayed with her in rooms she had at the Station. It’s been a long time since I’ve visited, and Miss Salmon has passed away, but I understand her family (whom I met during my visits) is continuing the bird feeding and sanctuary, so if you’re traveling to Jamaica you may want to stop by and feed a hummingbird yourself.
That hummingbird is quite large! The ones here are about the size of monarch butterflies. Too bad we couldn’t see the colours.
“Rodeando” = circling about, frequenting.
“Varal” = line or support for drying clothes.
It is indeed Eupetomena macroura, the Beija-flor Tesoura (Scissor Flower Kisser, illustrating how meaning becomes lost, and added, in translation).
sub
Rodeando, gerund of the verb “rodear”, from “roda”, a wheel. To hang around, come around, hang out, to keep coming back. The humming bird is always hanging around the man’s window.
Somehow this doesn’t surprise me, hummers being the little extroverts they are. Awfully sweet, though. 🙂
When I was in college my mom had set up a hummingbird feeder on our porch and a mated pair with a nest nearby came by to drink from it. They very quickly learned who was responsible for it, and if it ran empty they’d come get right in our face (by inches) and squeak at us until someone refills it.
One time a group of wasps had claimed it and were chasing the poor birds away. Again one of them came to squeaking to me for help. I took care of the wasps for them.
I wish I had gotten these birds on video. They were shockingly intelligent and social.
Reblogged this on peakmemory and commented:
“a man and his semi-tame hummingbird.”