Hummingbirds are messengers between the spirit world and the physical world. When we see and hear these beautiful little creatures, we can feel joy in our souls and rejoice with them to the pure essence of life. These little masters of flight eat tiny bugs and flower nectar. What a sweet dinner they have. When we see Hummingbird, it reminds us to savor the sweetness in our own lives. We had the privilege of watching a hummingbird build a nest and raise three young ones just three feet from our studio window. Not only did we feel incredibly blessed to have her as part of our family, but we learned a great deal about hummingbird’s diet and life cycle.

One of the interesting aspects of watching this Hummingbird mother was her nest building techniques. It was early spring and we hadn’t washed the salt spray and spider nests from the window casings yet. This little female Hummingbird flew from window to window gathering these sticky spider nests and collected lichen from the fence posts and Alder trees. Then combining this all together created the most beautiful little nest the size of a 50 cent piece on the top of a branch in the Cedar tree right out side our Studio window. We were so amazed to watch her lay her 3 tiny little eggs and sit on them until they hatched 2 weeks later.

Another fun thing to watch was the baby’s escape from the nest. They don’t stand on the edge and flap their wings continually and build up strength and bravery as the young Eagles do. One day when they’re all too fat and big to fit in the nest they just get up on the edge and jump off! They flap like mad and almost touch the ground and bob up and down in altitude until they make it back up to the branches around the nest. They don’t really go back to the nest because at this point they don’t fit. Mom rushes around the gardens and trees collecting tiny bugs and nectar and feeding them all as fast as she can while they tweet madly about their hunger and traumatic experience!

They hung aound the garden for a few weeks getting bigger and stronger on nectar and bugs until they flew off to their destiny. We were so amazed to actually watch the process first hand and to see just how many bugs a tiny hummingbird will eat, especially mosquitoes and gnats.

We saw them return the next year to the spot where we had a feeder hung that year of their birth. We hurried up and hung up the feeder, amazed at their memory, to keep them around in hopes of that nesting happening again but it never did. What a joy that was to experience!