The Hummingbird Whisperer

It is no secret to my family and friends that I totally love birds. I have 4 birdfeeders scattered throughout our relatively small backyard that I am pretty good about keeping filled up (yes they are empty right now, but I swear I will fill them tomorrow...or maybe even this evening). On April 9th I looked out my kitchen window and saw a small bird in the middle of our grass. I assumed it was another bird that had flown into our glass wall (stupid, stupid idea the previous owners of this house thought was a home improvement). We have only lived here for 6 months and have already "buried" 4 dead birds who flew into it and fell to their death...one of them ended up impaled on our rose bush, (YUCK). But this one was still moving! So I ran out there to see if I could save it and, to my surprise, it was a hummingbird. I had never seen one sitting still before, they are always hovering and flitting and flying around. This one was trying, unsuccessfully to fly away, something was wrong with one of its wings.

At Jack's request, I let it be to see if it would "shake it off" and fly off on its own. But 15 minutes later I went outside and it was still scooting along the ground trying desperately to fly. So I did what any logical, bird loving person would do...I squatted down next to it and scooped my hands underneath it and picked it up. It didn't even try to fly away from me or anything, it was like it knew that I was trying to help it. It was amazing. I figured it was hungry because I didn't know how long it had actually been down there before I saw it, so I walked over to a flowering orange tree in our backyard that I always see hummingbirds feeding at and held it up to one of the flowers. Damned if it didn't start eating from the flowers!!! It ate like it was really hungry and it guided me around to keep on moving it from flower to flower by reaching its little head out toward the next flower it wanted to eat from. I felt like I should be in a Disney princess movie or something as I held my cupped hands holding this hummingbird up to the flowers to drink their nectar (think Snow White, Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella, who all had a special way with woodland creatures). By the way, did you know that hummingbirds have crazy long tongues?

I am obviously not equipped to rehabilitate an injured hummingbird, so wonderful Jack did some Googling and learned how to make an appropriate little box for it and what to prepare it to eat. We also learned that if those poor birds don't eat every 2 hours (for the juveniles) they will die. So it seems that picking it up and feeding it was 100% the right thing to do. After our little feathered patient was safely situated in her temporary home I called Yvette (my step-mom and a fellow bird lover) for some advice on our situation. She just happened to have a number on hand of a local Hummingbird Rescuer because this exact same thing happened to her last week. Seriously, I am not lying, how bizarre is that? So I made a couple of phone calls and a volunteer from a group called "Project Wildlife" met me a couple of hours later just down the street from my house. She examined it and told me that it is a juvenile, less than a year old! She had a bunch of ready made hummingbird transporter baskets and she took it from me to bring it to her home where she would rehab it and then release it back into the wild. How great is that?! I actually got to save a hummingbird.