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Tuesday, February 9, 2010 | Serving Del Rio and Val Verde County: Since 1929
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Can you help Mr. Hummingbird?
Published April 1, 2007
Among the many interesting birds that spend their summers in Del Rio, there are few more intriguing than hummingbirds.
While you are reading this, a man named Dan True is waiting to catch on film an auspicious event: the hatching of two tiny hummingbird eggs in a small nest inside the cavernous barn behind Del-Tex RV and Auto Repair Center.
True, a retired meteorologists and author of the book “Hummingbirds of North America: Attracting, Feeding and Photographing,” discovered that the huge metal-roofed barn was a hummingbird nesting center back in 1998.
He and his wife Diane, who did not join him on this particular 440-mile trek from their home in Clovis, N.M., and got to, instead, take shelter in a bathtub during that city’s recent tornado outbreak, have catalogued up to 16 hummingbird “hens” nesting inside the gigantic barn.
But True pointed out to me that there have been changes around the barn that he believes have affected the nesting hummingbird population inside.
True said that Barbara and Jack Plyler, who own Del-Tex, told him that within the past year the land immediately south of the barn was cleared for imminent development. True said the lack of buffering vegetation now causes the interior of the barn to be particularly windy and this year, so far, he has only recorded three hummingbirds building and maintaining nests inside the structure.
True and his wife have also created a fascinating 25-minute video titled “Mother Hummer,” the story of a mother hummingbird flying to Del Rio after wintering in Mexico, building her tiny nest and raising her babies.
The film is full of hummingbird facts and endearing footage of these tiny, but tough, creatures.
My favorite is the sequence in which the mother hummingbird begins building her nest. In it, she carries fresh spider webbing to the nest site and uses this immensely strong and elastic natural fiber to bind dried grass, camouflage material, soft plant down and tiny feathers together into a cozy little home for her eggs and chicks.
Because she weighs so little – less than a U.S. penny – she really has to work to stamp the nesting material into place with her little hummingbird feet.
True and his wife have discovered through much trial and error that hummingbirds prefer to build their cup-shaped nests on the fork of a small branch and that they prefer foliage above this nest site to protect the vulnerable eggs and later, the chicks, from the elements and from predators.
The Trues developed a hummingbird nesting platform consisting of steel rods that duplicate the shape of a forked tree branch and have added a bright green craft foam “leaf” that sits like an umbrella over the rods. Hummingbirds seem to love it.
You can buy your own copy of the video, a hummingbird house or just look at some of Dan’s amazing hummingbird photos on his web site, www.hummingbird-house.com.
Dan is also looking for someone locally to assist him in maintaining the sugar-water feeders near the entrance of Del-Tex barn throughout the summer. The feeders are an important source of nutrition to the hummingbird moms nesting inside the barn.
If you’re interested in helping out, please email him from his web site or by calling him at (505)693-5209. Please don’t volunteer unless you’re sure you can commit to this.
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