Hummingbirds: A tiny sign that spring is here

Tiny as a demitasse cup, woven of grasses and spider web, and camouflaged with a bit of lichen on the outside, this hummingbird's nest is already alive with young.

Bills up and open, begging for food, these two hummer chicks hatched a few weeks ago from eggs no bigger than a pinkie nail. They'll fledge in about another week. Among the earliest nesters of local birds, this clutch of Anna's hummingbirds weathered the recent rain, wind and cold, and looks raring to welcome spring when it officially arrives Sunday.

During a recent rare sun break, sweet-scented plum blossoms burgeoned in a cloud of white on a tree near the nest, and the grass in this Greenwood-neighborhood backyard glowed spring green. The mother hummer zipped off on another foraging sally, perhaps to raid a spider web for bugs or fly-catch on the wing.

She returned in minutes with a meal of early spring bugs and nectar, sitting on the edge of the nest and thrusting her bill deep down the gullets of her tiny young, delivering their meal. Only by comparison to their young could a hummingbird ever look so big.

Dazzling aerialists, Anna's have for decades been establishing a year-round presence in Western Washington, extending their range from their native Central and Southern California all the way to southern British Columbia. The expansion is made possible, experts think, by homeowners putting out feeders throughout the winter, and gardens with exotic plants in flower, providing life-giving nectar even in winter.

Today, the population of Anna's is estimated in Western Washington at up to 1,000 birds.

Anna's get going on their nests long before migrating Rufous hummingbirds even return to the Northwest from Mexico. With such an early start, many Anna's will raise two clutches of young in a season.

Like all birds, their architectural skills are hard-wired: The basic movements of gathering and manipulating material into the shape of a nest is deep within birds' DNA, said John Marzluff, author and biologist at the University of Washington. But materials are a matter of opportunity. Marzluff said crows in Japan have even been known to steal coat hangers off clotheslines.

Hummingbirds will gather bits of spider web to stick together woven grasses. The Greenwood nest even sports a bit of woolly material dropped on the ground by crows also building nearby. The lichen siding is for camouflage.

Birds will pluck hair off animals for their nests, and the shedding of mammals now under way just as birds need material for nest construction is no coincidence in the interwoven timing of nature, Marzluff said.

Anna's aren't particular about siting: David Hutchinson, owner of Flora & Fauna Books in Seattle, and a local hummingbird expert, has seen nests in the tops of alder trees, in ornamental conifers, even in blackberry bushes.

He was among the first locally to notice Anna's were year-round residents, studying them when he worked at Discovery Park in 1981.

Hutchinson's survey of people living nearby revealed they were accommodating the birds by keeping feeders going even in freezing weather with everything from old hiking socks, to heat lamps, or even a few drops of glycerin in the sugar water to lower the freezing point.

While some birds are pushed out by suburbanization, Anna's live happily in our midst, sustained with our feeders and gardens. Their secret lives in tiny nests snugged into trees and shrubs all over the city are a bit of grace amid our noise and bustle.

Mardi Boss and Kathy Palacios were amazed when they spotted the hummingbird nest in a ceanothus in their backyard. Woven around a branch, the nest swings with the shrub, secure and stable no matter how hard the wind blows.

They find themselves rooting for the success of the nest, Boss said, and grateful for the gift of the tiny new lives after a long, dark winter.

"It give spring a whole new meaning."

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com