I found a pear shaped hummingbird nest – i verified it against other photos on line – hanging in my orange?
tree. It is empty and appears to have a "tear" from top to nearly the bottom, but was well built and still hanging. There are the remains of a second nest (older dried up but still comparable) next to it. I have hummingbirds every year. Is the tear in the newer nest natural and might it be used again, or would a predator have done that? I also saw down feathers on the ground but no dead birds. Back to my question, do these sack like hummingbird nests have natural long openings/slits?
Related Blogs
Comments (6)
Hummingbirds are fun, entertaining, full of energy and it’s easy to attract hummingbirds.
You can try here for more help with that.
http://wild-birds.suite101.com/article.cfm/hummingbird_nests
YOU have sharp Eyes ! Those little nests are hard to spot ! I don’t think Hummingbirds have any natural predators that attack Their nests. So I suspect the "slit" you observed might’ve been made by the Mother- to allow it’s little ones to drop out & fly away when they were ready… I also don’t think they Reuse their Nests- although if they Like a given Location, they’ll keep building new Ones nearby… By & large, -They’re pretty cool little Birds !
I have humming birds in our yard, We found a nest in our lemon tree this spring,an old nest, but a new one I believe is higher up in the tree, for they hover around up there, I have a feeder near the tree. our nest has the same slits, from the mother and little ones. they are very unique birds. they are a joy to watch.
cool
Stupid "error 999" when answering with "hot links" grrr
edit: here’s the link http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geurIAaRNMvZMA0gJhxrF_?p=hummingbird+nesting+habits&fr=ush-ans
oh really
I did not hear that before
The hanging type nests usually have a near round hole about midway up, so I would guess yours is damaged. But to guess from what would be speculation, although there are several other birds that prey on hummingbird nests and young. That is why the nests are usually so cleverly concealed. Hummingbirds rarely use the same nest twice. An exception to this is sometimes the hen raises more than one brood in a nesting season. She will then often times reuse the same nest.