Growing Up Humming by Mike Spinak
My rating: 5/5 cats
here’s the thing—i get about 6-10 requests a week from authors wanting me to read and review their books. and i used to be much more open to the idea. but then i discovered netgalley. and edelweiss. and the library. and all of those things are great, but they come with a ticking clock, a “you must read me right now or lose your privileges.” and between that and the new job which gives me far less time to read, i just have had to turn people down left and right. and i feel bad, i do, but with BEA around the corner and all these other books toppling over at my place, it is just not in the cards for me right now.
but i got a request from the author of this book, with a link to the book itself, and i just clicked it to see what this hummingbird thing was all about, out of curiosity, and before i knew it, i had read the whole thing! i was captivated!
it is a book that i suppose is suitable for children, but it’s not all baby-talk and crummy drawings. it is a book of truly stunning photographs of hummingbirds from like an inch away, and lots of interesting facts about the birds and the way they develop from gross and pink to viable bullets of zoom and wing.
my dad has hummingbirds on his back porch, with his little hummingbird feeders, and let me tell you—those things are skittish. they are a different breed of hummingbird than the ones in this book, these are anna’s hummingbirds, and my dads are…not. whenever i try to take picture of them, i get some rainbow-colored blurs. which are not awesome.
his photos are remarkable. for serious.
they start when the baby hummingbirds are fifteen and thirteen days old. and all ruffled and spiky-looking. they are in a nest of lichen and spiderwebs and this giant (comparatively) seed pod, and he has some great photos of mama bird regurgitating tasty nectar and pureed bug down their little humming throats.
he follows their progress to larger-hummingbird size, and then one of them leaves the nest, while the other, younger one, is not going anywhere. so the mama bird has to use devious tactics to get her young one to leave home already. nature is so, so cool.
here are some neat hummingbird facts:
Two days later, at twenty-one days old and nineteen days old, both chicks are so large that they not only sit on top of the nest, rather than in the nest, they also spend most of their time facing opposite directions, to stay out of each other’s way
not so much a fact, but a really cool photo, and a very practical thing for birds with pointy beaks to do.
A flock of Anna’s hummingbirds is called a bouquet, a glittering, a shimmer, a hover, or a tune
how lovely!
Anna’s hummingbirds have such small legs that they can’t walk.
hahaahahh – awwwwww…
so, yeah. now i feel like i have done a favor for an author in the way i always want to, but he has done me a favor, too, because now i am only 4 books behind on my reading challenge, and i got to see some really gorgeous photographs.
everyone wins!
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