by Dan True DEVELOPMENT OF A HUMMINGBIRD HOUSE
A hummingbird house seemed so improbable, that the thought never entered my mind, even though I had photographed hummingbirds several years in the US, Canada, and Mexico and authored a major hummingbird book. It took a trip to the Bahamas to film the Bahama Woodstar to open my eyes to the possibility of a hummingbird house.
At a British garden party at a banker's home next to the ocean near Nassau in February of 1997, I finished my hummingbird slide show presentation to about 60 members of the Bahamas National Trust, an organization similar to our Audubon Society.
Finger snacks, wine, and schmoozing among the guests followed my speech. One guest, a Paradise Island contractor, asked where he might order hummingbird houses to install on his condominiums. My silent reaction was, "what a bizarre idea." I couldn't imagine a hummingbird entering a birdhouse. Incredible as it sounded, I also maintain a personal philosophy that nothing is impossible...difficult maybe...but not impossible.
Humorously, I told the contractor that if he experimented with the idea, never put a roof on anything intended to be a hummer house. The whole idea seemed so unlikely I dismissed it from my conscious mind. My unconscious mind, however, apparently didn't let go so easily. Thirty days later, after I was back home in Clovis, New Mexico, I was getting out of bed one March morning when out of nowhere the design for a hummingbird house flashed through my mind.
Too excited to eat breakfast, I went into my shop and fashioned a "Hummingbird House" prototype out of brass welding rod, a washer, and cardboard. The "house" was really a platform. The platform was open on all sides under a cardboard roof. That prototype would have never "worked," nor did a dozen or so other subsequent designs cranked out and tested in New Mexico, Florida, Arizona, and California throughout the summer. Disappointed that I hadn't quickly discovered a design that hummingbirds liked, nevertheless, the project had me hooked. Designing a successful hummingbird house took over the lives of my wife Diane and I.
Back at the drawing board, armed with magnifying glass and calipers, we studied and measured architectural details of forty or fifty real hummingbirds nests. The most common feature the little hens used for nest location was a fork in a branch, a branch averaging ¼" in diameter. After a lot of measuring, and re-measuring how the little hens anchored and built their nests we shaped and tested several more designs. By August, with no hint of success and the breeding season about to end, we reluctantly became mentally prepared to shelve the project until spring. That August, our last hope for success was to attract a hen that would nest for the third time in one season. The chance of that was extremely slim, especially on the flat prairieland of little Clovis, New Mexico. But with nothing to lose, we forged ahead. And lightning struck.
We had finished welding up prototype number 15 that we intended to show to a Black-chinned hen coming to our feeder. As I studied the hot, still smoking work, I said out loud, "If I were a mom-to-be hummingbird I think I would like an anchor stub here." Diane suggested that I follow my instincts. I put my welding hood back down, and added the stub. Diane painted the unit and with undaunted enthusiasm we installed our latest prototype under an eave where winds would be minimal. Three days later, the little hen started building her nest on our Hummingbird House. Her nest was centered exactly where the stub had been added.
That first successful design was based on a "C" shaped spine, with the "C" a perfect half circle. We noticed that the hummingbird stretched her nest from its anchor point and the fork in an attempt to attach it to the spine's curve, even though it was difficult for her to do so. To make it easier for her to follow that building method, we reformed the spine's back into the shape of an "E". From the first offering of the "E" spine, the hummingbirds have attached their nests to it as we sensed they would. The added stub, the reshaped spine, and the fork became the heart of our Hummingbird House. Further tweaking of the design has resulted in a nesting platform superior to what a hummer can find in the wild. The Hummingbird House also gets her both out of the weather, and away from predators. As a result, more chicks survive than in the natural world.
Since that first success we have continually added other improvements to the Hummingbird House, improvements born from analyzing the way hundreds of hummers have attached their nests to our device. Our most recent improvement was a tiny tuft of "starter" cotton hot glued on top of its fork. In March of this year we showed 30 models with cotton and 30 without to a colony of Black-chinned hens about to begin nesting. The little birds preferred the cotton tufted models, however there was a surprise. Without exception each hen tugged the cotton from its top location and tucked it down into the fork's intersection, between the two branches forming the fork. They used that piece of material to form the foundation of their nest. To cater to their preference, we now glue the starter cotton exactly where the hens indicated they want it.
Eave mounted Hummingbird Houses have allowed observations of nesting hummer habits that would otherwise take years to see in the wild.
For example, in March of this year, we were lucky enough for the first time to watch three separate little hens inspect our Hummingbird House. Each little bird "measured" the device against her building ability by pretending she was building. In other words, the hens made "dry runs" with her beak...around, over, under, and across every element of the house. A couple of the hens went through this process more than once through the course of an hour, as if to be absolutely certain that if she selected that site she had the ability to place building material precisely where she wanted, and probably more importantly, that once placed, her nest would be solidly anchored and secure against wind and gravity.
One little hen even flitted to five separate hummingbird houses in succession, going through the motions of nest building on each before finally selecting and building on one. Then, watching these three build their nests as neighbors was an eye opener into the personality of female hummingbirds.
When one hen hummed away from her site to gather building material, one of the other hens would dart over and steal material. Then, when the "borrowing" hen left to get material, the "borrowed from" hen would dart to her neighbors nest and steal material. With that behavior, it's no wonder that it takes the little birds 4 to 5 days to complete a nest!
If you enjoy watching these little birds in action around a feeder, you'll enjoy watching their nest-building antics and then raising chicks on a Hummingbird House at your house.
Happy Humming.
Dan True is the author of Hummingbirds of North America, published by the University of New Mexico Press. He is an aviator and former weatherman for the Albuquerque and Amarillo, Texas markets. Visit his web site to learn more.
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