Tied to Mom's apron strings, a story about Hummingbirds!

One day many years ago, I was working at South Coast Botanic Gardens. There was a lady named Shirley Wells who lived locally who visited the Gardens everyday to observe the Hummingbirds in the Gardens. Shirley was an authority on Hummingbirds and had published many books and papers about the Hummingbirds living on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. I was fortunate to meet her and picked her brain about Hummingbirds. I recently found out she died not to long after I left the South Coast gardens and went to the headquarters garden, the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia.

I maintained several hummingbird feeders around the Childrens Garden area where where I was working so she usually spent a lot of time observing the Hummers in that area. This day she pointed out to me a new nest that had just been built. I would watch it each day also to observe what was going on. Two baby Hummers were hatched and the Mother carefully tended to them until it was time for them to leave the nest and fly away on their own. One of the babies did that, but the other just decided he didn't want to leave home. Mom encouraged him for several days, but finally gave up and decided it was time to build a new nest so she could start the next brood. She started the new nest about 10 feet away from the old one, and by this time was completely ignoring 'Junior' in the old nest. Junior watched her carefully, confused as to why he was being ignored, and when the new nest was finished, Junior happily flew over to the new nest and made himself right at home! He stayed for a couple of days while his frustrated Mother did everything possible to drive him away! Talk about being tied to his Mom's apron strings, this little guy surely was! Thank you Shirley for teaching me about Hummingbirds, I still enjoy feeding them and watching them 30 + years later!

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Ron, the Plant Man