A female
Costa’s hummingbird was queen of the north side feeder all winter. I took
pictures of her in fair weather and foul. I was sure to see her sitting at the
feeder or on the top of a dead branch next to the feeder.
I
identified her as a Costa’s based on two observations. One, there are only two
wintering species here in Las Vegas NV, so she could only be a Costa’s or an
Anna’s. Two, the Anna’s female has a tear drop of color on her throat; the
Costa’s female does not. The north side queen did not have the tear drop and
she was smaller than the Anna’s.
Come
warmer weather I didn’t see her anymore. I hoped that meant she had gone to the
desert or headed up towards Utah, where some Costa’s summer.
Then
last Saturday my neighbor told me he had a hummingbird’s nest in his bottle brush bush that is between our two houses, on the north side of my place. I was
excited since I have not had the privilege of watching a nesting hummingbird.
Then he added: there were two eggs, but they were cracked.
 |
| Nest with broken eggs |
Right
then I knew this was a failed nest. A female doesn’t ordinarily lay eggs and
then desert the nest. Either she is
driven from her nest for some reason, or she dies. Suddenly the fact I hadn’t
seen my Costa’s female lately became very disturbing. In all probability she is
dead.
I went
out to see the nest and then asked permission to photograph it. From its
location and construction I feel confident that it was her nest.
Costa’s
like to build their nests in open, sparsely leaved shrubs. They normally put
the nest anywhere from two feet to eight feet above the ground. This one is at about
five feet.
 |
| Nest securely tucked where limbs have been pruned off. |
The
nest is constructed of plant fibers, spider webs, bits of leaves or flowers, and
down. It is grayish in color.
The
nest fits all those descriptors.
 |
| Carefully constructed hummingbird nest |
So what
happened to the mother? I don’t know. There simply hasn’t been any bad weather
for her to contend with and she made it through the earlier bad weather just
fine. Predators are always a possibility. This doesn’t have to be neighborhood
cats. I have watched a Great Tailed Grackle peck an adult hummingbird to death,
much to my horror. Disease is another possibility. This winter I watched my
Mockingbirds get sick and disappear and a friend reported finding a dead
hummingbird a few blocks from my house. From the description, it was an adult
male.
I was
sad the whole rest of the day. My first hummingbird nest turned out not to be a
source of joy, but one of sorrow. I have to keep reminding myself that failure
and death is part of life, and just as important to the ultimate survival of
the species, including humans, as success and birth, even here in the
make-believe world of Las Vegas NV.
