Posted by Uzay Sezen on September 19, 2014 at 5:42 pm

2019-2020 breeding season has started!

IF YOU SEE a BLACK SCREEN please WAIT until SUNRISE in CALIFORNIA! Bella is sleeping 🙂

Welcome to the busy and productive nest of the hummingbird called Bella from La Verne, southern California located on a branch of a fig tree. Allen’s hummingbirds on average have their breeding season between February and July.

Studies done on ringed hummingbirds have shown that they can live up to 12 years. According to Karl Schuchmann, an ornithologist at Germany’s Alexander Koenig Zoological Institute and the Brehm Fund, a captive hummingbird lived for 17 years. In 2010, PBS Nature released an outstanding documentary called “Hummingbirds: Magic in the Air”. It is a must see prerequisite for a citizen scientist.

Hummingbirds have extremely energetic lives. Only females are involved in parental care and lay 4-5 clutches during the 7 month breeding season between late october and may. Normally each clutch has two eggs. It takes about 17 days for eggs to hatch and the chicks fledge at about 21-28 days afterwards. You can Bella’s breeding history starting from 2013.

Plumage pattern of Selasphorus sassin subs. sedentarius is quite different from that of the migratory species where only males have the distinct speckled gorget on their throat. In this species females also have a red patch of plumage.

Nature Documentaries has been paying attention to a number of live webcams including another hummingbird nest (which sadly passed away during the spring of 2014), red-tailed hawk cam of Cornell University who migrate away during winter. Hummingbird activities splendidly fill the gap for citizen naturalists during this dormant period.