232. Anna's Hummingbird

It is hard to imagine Leaning Oaks without Anna's Hummingbirds (Calypte anna),  they are nearly ever -present with their songs that sound like radio static, the small squeak notes that the males give during courtship flights and the constant buzz of activity around the feeders and flowers in the garden.  When we first moved here however,  Anna's Hummingbird had not yet colonized the property and I can still remember seeing the first one in the garden on a sunny October afternoon.  
Local researchers and naturalists, many of them associated with Rocky Point Bird Observatory, have located nests, followed successes and banded Anna's Hummingbirds and are slowly learning about the remarkable lives of this species.  Anna's Hummingbird probably arrived on southern Vancouver Island in the 1950's.  The species breeds nearly year round, with some females building multiple nests a year here.  They sometimes will reuse a nest, or even a one  of a Rufous Hummingbird and they will often re-use nesting material  - sometimes while the chicks are still in the nest!  Alison Moran from the RPBO hummingbird project tells of a female that had overlapping nests where the nest material was reused this way for four successive nestings.

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