This was a really fun create – drawing all the feathers were very Zen. I selected the topic because my mom loves hummingbirds.
But – I digress, on to the hummingbird information!
Hummingbirds lay the smallest eggs of any bird, though it is actually large for their body size. The females of most hummingbird species make small, rounded nests that vary in size based on the species, but some are no bigger than half a ping-pong ball. They build their nests on tree / shrub branches and lay their teeny tiny eggs inside of them – usually two. They use many different materials to construct their nests, including moss, grass, bark, lichen, and even spider silk. When they use spider silk they use it to both secure it to the branch upon which they are constructing their nest and to bind the nest material together, thus taking advantage of one of the many awesome properties of spider silk – it stretches a bit. Using the stretchy silk means that as the wee baby birds hatch and begin to grow – their nest will grow with them. Amazingly, hummingbirds will actually reuse nest they constructed during previous seasons, so they occasionally look as though they are somewhat layered. For the most part, hummingbird mothers will feed both nectar and small arthropods to the babies as they grow. The babies will stay in the nest for about 20 days before they start to test the confines of said nest.The two baby broad-tailed hummingbirds in the photo I used to make the artwork fledged three days after was taken - I imagine because they totally were not two meters apart in that tiny nest.