The Paddleboat Family

In the middling time between Portland’s winter and spring last year, we noticed a small nest in one of the trees in the courtyard of our apartment building. It’s really more of an outdoor hallway than a courtyard, and the trees are pretty rangy Japanese maples – not exactly the great outdoors. It was my second spring in this building in an apartment facing that courtyard, and I’d seen hummingbirds before – even the start of another nest. But never a hummingbird in the nest. Without flowers or even buds on the maples, I didn’t expect to see much more. But there it was, an espresso-cup sized nest made of lichen, sticks, and fluff.

Soon, we could say hi to the mom every time we left the building – she was always on the nest. Within a week, someone had hung up a feeder.

Then one day, in her place we saw two dopey beaks poking out from a tiny mass of pinfeathers and sleepiness.

Ms. Paddleboat, as we had named her, soon hatched two grundy lil dorkuses that we named Alfredo and Paddleboat.

They were skeptical of us from the start.

We were concerned when Ms. Paddleboat stopped coming back to the nest. It was late February and we got some pretty cold weather. The first and most prominent result of even a little googling was – don’t worry and don’t touch them! Mother hummingbirds usually leave the nest as soon as they can, returning only to feed their little dorkuses. This is so they don’t lead predators back to the nest – which is pretty smart considering they’re the size of a thimble.

They got fat real quick. Alfredo got fatter faster.

We were sad when they all flew away, but we remained hopeful that we would see them again. See, we had also learned that we should leave the nest in place, as they often return to the same nest year after year. And this year that’s exactly what happened! Ms. Paddleboat came back and had another birb child. Our theory was that he was planning on getting so fat there wouldn’t be room for a sibling in the nest.

We named him Butter Crumpet.