Richard Moore Outdoor Report: Emerald of the RGV

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, Texas (ValleyCentral) — The day starts early for this Buff-bellied hummingbird, as she lands on a favorite perch at dawn on a misty morning. She rustles her wings to help dry them before taking off on her first foray of the day.

Returning to perch, she opens and shuts her bill repeatedly perhaps sampling the mist. After fluttering her wings and lingering for a brief rest, she peers about restively searching for her next insect to snare before soaring off.

While it is approaching peak spring migration in the Rio Grande Valley, with swarms of Ruby-throated hummingbirds and others funneling through deep South Texas on their way to northern breeding grounds, resident buff-bellied hummers are already raising young.

The tropical Buff-bellied hummingbird, with its shimmering iridescent emerald green feathering, does not stray farther north than southernmost Texas.

While migrating ruby-throats may travel several thousand miles to nest as far north as Canada, many Valley buff-bellies nest here where they live year-round.

The female does all the work, constructing a tiny cup of a nest fashioned with down and weaved with strands of spider silk adorned with lichens.

A buff-bellied hummingbird egg is so tiny that it is approximately the size of an eraser on the tip of a number two pencil. Once it hatches, the little hummer develops quickly and is ready to fledge in some three weeks.

Hummingbirds usually raise two young, but this nest contains only one. Each time she arrives with a meal, the youngster performs a death-defying act of sword swallowing as she thrusts her bill into junior’s regurgitating a rich mix of pollen and insects.

Her dedicated efforts at single parenting are about to pay off as this little hummer is “helicoptering” on the verge of lifting off.