hummingbird responding to voice

Watch this hummingbird oil painting come to life in 1 minute (time lapse)

This is another of my hummingbird paintings, that I painted for a children’s book, but my blog post today is about the same kind of hummingbird I shared with you yesterday. There’s another surprise video that I took today! You might remember that in the past I said that birds come to me when I sing?

It was something I discovered by accident when we were raising guinea fowl and I couldn’t get them to come back to their shelter at night. I tried calling for them, but one day when I was outside singing just for the love of singing, I noticed that they responded to my voice and came nearer to me. In fact, they kept coming toward me as if in some sort of spell… it was wonderful! So, instead of yelling my fool head off and those birds ignoring me, in the evenings I’d sing a hymn and they’d come home from wherever they’d been hiding in the fields!

As I’ve previously shared, we used to have a hobby farm and had to sell it when the company my husband worked for left the country and ghosted our town, leaving everyone unemployed. We had to start over and it’s taking us a long time, but we focus on each step. Anyway, the guinea fowl days are gone, but I discovered that wild song birds and hummingbirds also respond to my singing!

I’ve hoped to capture this experience for you, and I’m getting closer to doing that. I have a video to share… it’s not quite the same exhilarating experience I have when I don’t have a phone held up (they don’t like that). If I’m still and don’t have a phone held up, a hummingbird will come within INCHES of my face, hover, and stare with direct eye contact, his tiny eyes locking with mine. It’s kind of scary actually. I never know if he might actually fly directly into my nose one of these days!

But so far they don’t do this when I have a camera/phone held up. I could try a tripod in the future, but that might spook them too. We’ll see. This time there were two hummingbirds, but they look identical so I don’t know if you’re seeing the same little guy or if one flew in/out and the other then flew in/out. But you’ll see that when I sing, they fly out from wherever they were hiding. Isn’t it amazing? Stay tuned after the video, I have an update!

So, while I was playing the video back, I could hear the chittering sounds that the hummingbirds make. I was confused because I didn’t recall that being in the video. It wasn’t! Since I could clearly hear HIM, just outside the patio windows, he must have heard me as well, via the video! He chittered all the way through my singing on the video and stopped when the video ended!

Hopefully I can capture it on video when the hummingbirds come near my face and look directly into my eyes. So far this is as close I’ve been able to get to video taping this experience. I hope it was fun to see!