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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Black-chinned Hummingbird Nesting (1 Viewer)

Hummingbird Market

Active member
Tucson, Arizona

Black-chinned hummingbird momma building a nest, incubating eggs, feeding young and babies fly off.

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/PfgVE-ABAAc

One day I was looking out my bathroom window and I saw a pine tree that had some busy hummingbird activity. I tried to rig up and video from the bathroom window but the vantage point was not good.

I did not want to intrude or cause stress to the mother so from the ground with a tripod I used a Canon Vixia video camera, 37x zoom, fixed focus and daylight white balance, sometimes I had to adjust the exposure. Using a 64GB card I set up the camera at dawn and just hit record and walked away. When the card was full in a few hours I transferred to a MacPro using Final Cut Pro X and selected the clips. Mostly nothing was happening while she was incubating the eggs. A month is condensed to thirteen minutes-- still too long but people who like hummingbirds enjoy every minute.

One early morning I found the nest empty as they had already left. I examined the ground below to see if they had fallen out of the nest but that was not the case.

Out of the corner of my eye I spied some bird movement and there was a baby hummingbird on an oleander branch being nurtured by mom. The other baby bird was not to be seen.

Momma often pecked at the baby on the branch--- at the head and body trying to encourage flight. And eventually they were both gone. But during the day and the next day there was much flight amongst the pine tree and oleander. Flight training I assume.

I opted to detach and delete the ambient audio as it is near our pool pump and it was annoying.
 
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Wow, that's amazing! I loved the video! Those babies were adorable.

I ran into a wild female near a busy street a day or two ago. I looked like a crazy person taking pictures of it up in a tree probably. I took them from a distance not to scare it away, so I took like 20 shots not knowing if I got it captured in the photos. Luckily I had a few good ones! I never saw one stand still before so it was especially a treat for me!

I'm very happy you shared this! I'll be heading off to Tucson soon, so I'm glad to think about seeing more hummingbird activity in the near future!
 
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