Day 13: Growing fast

It is day 13, and in the 48 hrs since my last visit to the hummers they have grown considerably. The first noticeable difference was that I can see that, at least for the older one, its tail now protrudes over the edge of the nest (below right). I can just make out the younger ones tail (below left).

They are now at the stage where their body length is as great as the diameter of the nest cup. We are only talking about an inch! The nest is constructed of fine silky spider web. It is flexible. Over the nest few days, while the two chicks rotate their bodies around the nest, they will expand the sides of the nest in order to accommodate their growing body size.

About 10 minutes after the first feeding that I witnessed this morning, the older chick lifted itself up and backed up to defecate over the edge. In the photo below we can now see the tail shafts with downy feathers at the end. Also they now have down feathers on the back – I blew up the photo below to illustrate this. With the nest being about 13 feet off the ground, this is something that I can not see while they are sitting in the nest.

I also witnessed the older chick stretching and flapping its wings (below). This may well have been one of the first times that it has done any wing exercises. Usually it is around day 15 that that stage in their growth begins to happen.