2019-2020 breeding season has started!
IF YOU SEE a BLACK SCREEN please WAIT until SUNRISE in CALIFORNIA! Bella is sleeping đ
Welcome to the busy and productive nest of the hummingbird called Bella from La Verne, southern California located on a branch of a fig tree. Allen’s hummingbirds on average have their breeding season between February and July.
Studies done on ringed hummingbirds have shown that they can live up to 12 years. According to Karl Schuchmann, an ornithologist at Germany’s Alexander Koenig Zoological Institute and the Brehm Fund, a captive hummingbird lived for 17 years. In 2010, PBS Nature released an outstanding documentary called “Hummingbirds: Magic in the Air”. It is a must see prerequisite for a citizen scientist.
Hummingbirds have extremely energetic lives. Only females are involved in parental care and lay 4-5 clutches during the 7 month breeding season between late october and may. Normally each clutch has two eggs. It takes about 17 days for eggs to hatch and the chicks fledge at about 21-28 days afterwards. You can Bella’s breeding history starting from 2013.
Plumage pattern of Selasphorus sassin subs. sedentarius is quite different from that of the migratory species where only males have the distinct speckled gorget on their throat. In this species females also have a red patch of plumage.
Nature Documentaries has been paying attention to a number of live webcams including another hummingbird nest (which sadly passed away during the spring of 2014), red-tailed hawk cam of Cornell University who migrate away during winter. Hummingbird activities splendidly fill the gap for citizen naturalists during this dormant period.
11 Comments
Beautiful! Thanks for providing this for all of us to see!
Thank you Kathy. Nestcams provide great natural history observations for citizen scientists.
Wow! How nice of you to share Bella here. đ Hummingbirds are fascinating little flying jewels. Just when we think we know all about them, they prove that we don’t. Webcams provide great learning tools. Thanks for airing Bella here.
BH
Is there eggs in that nest or not? One time I can see an egg, next time it’s not there and she is hardly ever on the nest. Is this a live cam?
Yes Ann, this is a live cam.
On 4/28/17 I was watching and I saw another humming bird making the humming bird sitting on the nest get off of the nest, like they were sort of fighting over who sits on the eggs. What is up with that? I can’t tell if the same bird is sitting on the eggs or not. Thanks.
Yes, thank you so much for providing this wonderful look at something we may otherwise never observe. I recently learned I have two ruby throated hummingbirds, so far, in my backyard, fighting over feeding rights. One is nesting for sure, as I’ve observed her carrying fluff in her beak, and the other is either a juvenile or another female. Is that a second nest to the left, I see? If so, I didn’t know hummingbirds nested closely by each other, this way. I live in Ontario, Canada, which is about 3hrs ahead of you there. Fun to watch this, and thanks again.
What happened to Rosie? .. This is a morning dove
April 12, 2017 Rosie abandoned chicks.
Aw. ..something happened to her then. âšī¸