In Praise of Research and Researchers

See those tic tac sized eggs in the incubator? They're Little Hermit Hummingbird eggs and the first photo is one of them candled; the slight red patch is the three day old heart of this soon-to-be hummingbird which I saw beating. The next photo shows the scale to weigh them and the data on the two latest eggs. Two "dummy" eggs replace them in the thimble sized nest so the mother continues to sit on them. Once hatched in 16 days, they will be placed back in the nest and mother will feed them insects and nectar multiple times a day to grow them from a shriveled raisin sized hatchling to a full sized hummingbird in 17 days. It must be fast because they're so vulnerable to predation in their nest close to the ground and attached to the back of a fern frond. They're in the incubator to begin with because they're even more vulnerable as eggs and because Julian, the researcher who lives in a house on my daughters property for four months a year, will swab the inside of the hatched egg for DNA for his research.

This is Julian's seventh year studying these tiny hummingbirds in the rain forest of Trinidad, recording their mating songs and dances, collecting data about these little known and shy birds by watching them, banding them and trying to trace paternity. The Little Hermits live in leks, one lek for their life, and males display for the females by dancing and singing their hearts out in an effort to be chosen by a female for mating. Each lek has its own song and, if a male moves to another lek for some reason, he learns the song of the new lek. Imagine. No one knew this before. As for what more this research will teach us about these hummingbirds, birds in general or the world around us remains to be seen but already it has increased the sense of awe in those who talk to Julian, including me and my grandson pictured below helping make the bands for the hummingbirds. Perhaps it's enough.