After going out of town for a couple of weeks I came back home to notice that some new tenants had moved in on my porch. As a gracious host, I did not evict them but instead set up a camera to watch them progress. How long does it take for a hummingbird to go from egg to flying away?
bird cam sophisticatedly installed
I didn't think to set up the camera right away, so I had to use text message and photo timestamps to establish the first part of the timeline:
April 9th: We noticed the eggs.
April 14th: The eggs hatched.
They are two weeks old here.
April 29th: I set up the time lapse bird cam.
Here is an example of the above timelapse with the added Fat Pencil Studio touch of a bit of zoom and brightness / contrast enhanced.
Mom coming in to feed her babies
They are getting too big for both to hang out inside of the nest at the same time
May 5th: The babies finally flew the nest. They looked pretty unstable in the morning but by the afternoon they were able to leave and didn't look back.
So the answer to the question is about 27 days. As a last fun fact, a few weeks later the same momma bird (we think) came back and laid more eggs in the same next, and the process started all over again.
As I was attempting to get the mini SD card out of the bird cam - it popped out and fell to the ground, slipping in between two floor boards on my porch. I was lucky to be able to find and retrieve it without too much deconstruction. Hope you admire my dedication to this blog post. = )
