Hummer, Come Home!

Here are some of the color studies I made of the birds while they were in my care.


I had a commentary air on NPR's All Things Considered tonight. Normally, my editor lets me know in advance when something's going to air. She's really terrific about it. I imagine she's on vacation, and someone else pulled this off the shelf. It's not exactly seasonal, but maybe they figured we could use a bit of summer...who am I to argue? Like most everyone else, I missed it, but the story is up on the NPR web site, with audio. There's also a cute picture. The commentary's titled "When Hummingbirds Come Home." It's a sequel to "My Hummingbird Summer," which aired April 4, 2005. Briefly, Phoebe and I raised four baby ruby-throated hummingbirds that were blown out of their nesting trees by a thunderstorm. The calls came in to the Bird Watcher's Digest office on the same July morning. One was injured in the fall, and never flew, but the other three fledged successfully, hung around the yard charming the bejabbers out of us for about another month and a half, then migrated. The next spring, all three- males now in resplendant breeding plumage--CAME BACK. I can't think of a better reward for feeding baby birds, dawn to dusk, every 20 minutes for three weeks, can you?

Man, I love it when commentaries air. This is my 18th since July of 2004. So that's about one per month. If you've got time to kill and the interest, here's a link to all the Zickefoose commentaries. Woo-hoo! I'm a happy girl tonight.