Yesterday Dave Steingraeber, a CSU botany prof and local hummingbird feeder extraordinaire, accompanied me to Grandview Cemetery to see what was going on with the newly discovered Black-chinned Hummingbird nest. The female was on the nest, went off the nest, came back to the nest, fed hatched young, sat on them for a while (a cool storm was coming in) and went off the nest again. This is the first confirmation of hatching.
Above: poor photo taken about 11:15am on 25Jly2018 hastily with cell phone thru scope seconds after the female had finished jamming food down the throats of her two hatchlings. The babies are not visible in this image but I did see a reddish bill tip sticking up above the nest rim at one point. The nest is 20 feet above ground on the north side of a 16-inch diameter at breast height Douglas-fir, about two feet in from the tip of its branch.
We can sort of assume hatching occurred on the 24th or 25th, and from that predict activity for the next several days. Incubation is reported in the literature as being 12-14 days, nestling development 21 days. Thus, if I am right about when the eggs hatched, activity in the form of the female feeding young should be more or less continuous and increasingly intense during daylight hours for the next 3 weeks (until mid-August). Depending on interest, I would be glad to schedule a session where we all go take a look at the situation thru a scope. If you are interested, let me know privately. Assuming this nesting progresses without calamity, I will set something up for early August on a weekday at 5PMish or 9AMish on a Saturday.
Dave Leatherman
Fort Collins
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