Interesting Creatures

For the past couple of days we have been watching hummingbirds out our school room windows. They are so fascinating to watch zoom by. They do actually zoom by. You can hear them. I went outside to watch them and actually had to move out of their way because they would go so fast I thought they would hit me. I'm sure they know better but that is our normal reaction when we see something coming at us that fast. hehehe
If you click on this picture you will see not one but three hummingbirds at the feeder. There was one male and he was very aggressive in defending "his" feeder. He would perch on top and not let any others come to feed on it. He would attack them and was very vocal in his intentions. I never heard a hummingbird call before so this was a treat.
Now this has been very distracting for our normal school work because when we see one zip by we run to the window to see if they are on the feeder or the tree. We looked up some information in the Handbook of Nature Study on pages 115-117 and found some interesting tidbits. Do you know how small their nests are? I was totally shocked. It said that they are about 3/4 inch in diameter and 1/2 inch deep and covered with lichen. It also mentioned that they usually attach the lichen with silk from spiders or caterpillars. How smart these birds are!