Original subtitles

- Sometimes,the smallest of thing

can change your life.

When we moved from New York to this suburban house

in Las Vegas, we found a note on a piece of cardboard

on our back porch with an arrow pointing up.

It read be careful, hummingbird's nest above.

To our surprise, there was a tiny nest straight

on the clothes line between old wooden clothes pins.

As we stared in wonder,

suddenly a female hummingbird flew in.

This is her story.

Just about three inches long, we named this little

winged friend Honey.

She's a black-chinned hummingbird.

She winters in Mexico and returns to the same nest.

When the star jasmine blooms, filling the air

with its sweet fragrance.

She will soon lay her precious eggs in the nest.

And the tiniest objects will hatch.

Oh Honey knows, cats are dangerous.

She keeps eye on them and will attack if necessary.

She's a protective and attentive mother.

Well she's starting to work on her nest.

Shh, let's watch.

Honey gathers plant fibers for her nest.

Backyard offers a variety of resources

and she knows the best material from experience.

The nest has been built on a clothes line,

cleverly using a clothes pin as a stabilizer.

She lines the inside with a soft material.

Her little feet kick the inside,

pressing the top with her wing

and she uses her strong bill to push material in place.

She makes several trips per hour.

She's not picking bugs here but she finds soft,

plant fibers on the ground like little parachutes

from floating seas.

She returns with her cautious zig zag flight.

Spider web is a key construction material.

The stickiness binds the fiber together

and giving the nest strength and flexibility.

She skillfully wraps the nest with spider silk

using her tongue and long bill.

She covers the top edge inward, forming a lid

preventing her egg falling out in high wind.

After about five days, her nest is ready

for arrival of her eggs.

It is at the dawn, the magic moment arrives.

A hummingbird's egg is the smallest egg of all birds.

It's about the size of a coffee bean

but compared to her tiny body, it's enormous.

It's like human delivering a 25 pound baby.

After the second egg arrives,

Honey sits on the nest night and day.

About two weeks, she incubates her eggs

and protects them from predators and high winds.

She touches the eggs with her tongue.

Is she checking the temperature?

Assuring the chicks' proper development,

she often rotates the eggs with her feet.

Not just sitting of course,

she feeds flower to flower

and busy gathering more material in the yard

creating maximum security

and comfort for her new chicks.

Sometimes, she has a surprise visitor to her nest.

She shows this visitor he is not welcomed.

Those male black-chins don't participate in nest building

or raising chicks.

Honey patiently waits alone on the nest.

The moment has arrived.

Their emerging begins.

Immediately Honey flies in and feeds sweet nectar

and bug soup to the first chick.

They look like little fat raisins, so we name them

Ray and Zen.

Because chicks are born naked,

with only downy feathers on their back,

Honey sits on the nest keeping them warm

for the next several days and nights.

Leaving only to procure food.

Around day 10, curious eyes open to the world.

They start to instinctively flap their little wings.

Rapidly growing Ray and Zen, they demand a lot

of prodding and fat.

Honey skillfully catches bugs in mid-air.

Kissing flowers to collect sweet nectar.

Inadvertently, she's pollinating these flowers

and quite often she comes back to the nest

with pollen stuck on her head and beak.

She regurgitates her special mix into their crop.

Cleaning is an important daily ritual.

It conditions pheasants for flight.

With oil from special gland under their tail.

It's not just itching and scratching as it appears.

Ray and Zen have been kicking around

to stretch the nest for more space.

This one spot became weak.

Honey's repairing it.

Another unwelcomed visitor when Honey is away.

Was this bird just curious or were the chicks too big?

All eggs and chicks are very vulnerable to predators

and Honey could have lost them in an instant.

It was a close call.

Honey is a busy single mother.

Protecting her territory and constantly foraging for food.

Feeding time is more frequent in the morning

and before sunset.

Although here we show most of their activity,

chicks still sleep a lot.

Hovering is one of the unique skill for hummingbirds.

It becomes handy for Honey when Ray and Zen

are getting big and no space for her to perch.

Chicks watch Honey fly away and start their practice

in this small nest filled with love curious

about the world beyond the porch.

Departure time is getting near.

Their flight training intensifies everyday.

They can flap their wings longer and faster.

Hummingbirds average wing beating somewhere between 50 to 70

times per second.

Ray and Zen's brand new wings are starting

to make good hums.

They also need to master controlling the angles

of their wings and body positions to fly like Honey.

With each practice, they develop strong muscles

to become light weight champions of flight.

Ray is ready to go but not without Zen.

Honey, the guardian, gets agitated if our cats

are anywhere near.

Sometimes excited chicks lose their balance.

They could fall accidentally into the mouths

of the sleeping giant.

She's constantly warning the cats to move away

with her aggressive chatter.

We have seen her attacking the sleeping giant in the past.

This time, the giant takes her hint and walks away.

Another successful defense of the nest.

After three weeks, the morning of departure arrives.

This will be their last feeding on the nest together.

Ray takes off first.

Once out of the nest, never to return.

Picking a safe landing spot is the first challenge.

Finding food is another challenge.

Honey acknowledges Ray's location but pacifies Zen.

She will have to gather more food for Ray.

Finally Ray's courage is rewarded.

Fledglings need to be fed by their mother

several times a day for another week or so

until they learn how to locate food sources on their own.

Now Honey is busier than ever feeding Ray and Zen

in separate locations.

Alone in the nest, Zen watches as the world goes by.

Imagining her adventure.

Ray sits nearby waiting.

Zen is being called.

Now is the time.

Fledglings call their mother with their high pitched chops.

As Ray anxiously waits for Honey to return,

Zen attempts to fly around the world.

Instead she grabs onto her friend to ask for directions.

Honey ignores Ray's pleas for more food.

She's still looking for Zen.

She spots Zen hanging out on the tip of the palm.

Oh how Zen struggles to find a secure place to land.

Zen finally lands on a vine.

And Honey rewards her with sweet nectar.

Hungry and curious, little chicks will learn

which flower is tasty and worth visiting.

Who are the dangerous predators

and eventually will head south for the winter.

Ray and Zen's exciting adventure has just begun.

Honey must be so proud.

As a Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said,

"A journey of a thousand miles must begin

"with a single step."

For a little hummingbird, it must begin with a single flap

to start their long journey.

We are happy to have witnessed their first flight.

- I was a photographer in New York for 30 some odd years

doing advertising and editorial work.

We looked for a place and we decided Las Vegas

was a good destination 'cause a lot of friends

would come visit you in Las Vegas.

Well when we got here, we opened the door, walked in,

went out on the back porch and discovered a note

written on a piece of cardboard.

We started looking at this hummingbird's nest,

we were astounded, we had never seen a hummingbird's nest.

At this point, we said, we hadn't even unloaded

our clothes or anything, we just virtually grabbed

the equipment and set up the equipment,

started photographing and that was the start of the book.

- When we moved here, we were working on the book,

another book project about our cat.

So when we saw the nest,

and the nest being such a great location,

we thought well this can be another book.

- Having this clothes line with a 360 degree view,

is a photographer's dream.

If you were photographing at a tree,

you'd be fighting branches and leaves

and getting a ladder up there and then you wouldn't have

very much control of the light.

In the advertising business, I always had control

of what I was doing.

Out here, I was a victim, always I felt of the elements

and of the bird.

I had to try and react to whatever was happening

at the moment.

It was sort of like shooting a sports event.

You're chasing back and forth

and you sort of know what's going to happen.

You know she's gonna come into the nest

but you don't know if you'll be at the right angle

to get whatever the action is.

The nest is so close to the roof

that you cannot put a camera above it.

It would be much too dangerous.

Also you couldn't get to the controls of the camera

to adjust it or focus it or anything.

Composing it would be much harder.

We solved this by using this front surface mirror

that we have which is a scientific mirror

they use for bouncing lasers off of them labs.

So that was a real solution since a regular mirror

gives you a ghost image.

This is very sharp and very clear

without a green tint that a normal mirror has.

- So we spent about three years, and because finally done

and published and we had

a book signing in Mandalay Bay.

There's a nice book store there.

We thought wow, this is great, we are done,

we are so satisfied, beautiful book.

We came back home, it was spring

and we saw Honey back on the nest again.

We thought oh maybe, maybe we should start shooting video.

When we started video,

the book project did help us

because we already seen the nest activity for three years

and we learned about timing.

After she lays eggs, and incubation time

is about two weeks

and then after the chicks hatch,

about three weeks they fly.

Those schedule did help us to prepare

and anticipate what is going on in this building

or feeding or those kinds of activities.

- The real benefit of this nest is if we go back

to the idea that you have 360 degree access to it

'cause when you find the nest out in nature,

you fight, of course all the trees,

but you fight the wind.

This is terrific because it's out of the sun,

it's out of the wind, it's out of the view of predators.

There's no rain.

She's obviously a very smart bird.

In the middle of this clothes line, no predator can get

to her unless it's a flying predator.

A good example of how big the nest is,

it's about the size of a half of a walnut shell.

Now you've got the eggs of the hummingbird,

which are the size of a coffee bean.

You have these two coffee beans inside the walnut shell.

- Something like that. - Yeah.

The actual hatching process will take anywhere

from an hour and a half to three hours

for one egg to hatch.

- It seems like it takes very big effort

to make the first hole and then they will rest,

maybe hour, maybe two hours.

- Before they peck the next hole.

- Right and then of course,

each one's different and but usually peck and rest

and then started to put, put,

three holes, then it's quite fast.

- Right, then I guess the oxygen comes in

and they really start pecking.

I always say it's equivalent to them unzipping the egg.

- That's probably about hour.

- Two hours.

It took us more than three years to film

the entire sequence.

- I didn't find the hatching,

the first year of hatching shot was good enough.

Since egg is so small,

you can see them but not quite details.

So we wanted to get a better shot.

That first year actually Honey came back on the nest,

second time.

Then that second time was wind kicked on the nest

and great magnification.

- Caused a problem.

- We waited the next year to get the shot,

but to our surprise, the eggs were gone.

We don't know exactly what happened,

but those tiny eggs are tasty treat to some--

- Some predators.

- So the third year, we said we're gonna be here,

we're gonna do this and she came back, we were ready.

- Well it did seem like it was almost our child,

our grandchild and we got very involved in it.

We had the camera set up for so long around the nest

that when the babies flew off,

the first thing they did was they flew onto the lens

of the camera and sat and looked into the lens.

- Hummingbird seems like a very curious bird

and we often have experience.

You have camera, and you're filming one bird

and this bird comes around your head,

flying over and teasing.

We learned as we should, you can't move video cameras

to chase hummingbirds all over the place.

- It doesn't work, it makes you nauseous

looking at the footage.

- They fly like.

All over the directions.

We can feel her dedication.

She's so

concerned about cats

being under the nest

when the chicks are trying to flap wings

and sometimes they really literally

like almost fall upside down

and we almost want to go reach over and put the hands

on them and felt how she was feeling.

- The great joy that we've had in doing this

is being sort of invited into

watch the entire

sort of metamorphosis of this egg

developing, seeing the movement of the chick

inside the egg before it hatched.

All the way up to the point of the babies flying

off of the nest.

Really being personally invited

into this hummingbird's world.

- I hope I can show that and people to feel

that kind of experience we had through this.

- Now we're gonna wait for Honey to come and feed you.

So I'm going to bow out a picture.

See you later, bye, bye.

Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.

- On you.

On you.

- Where is she?

- It's on your belt.

- I have to move.

Because I'm in a very awkward position.

And I gotta go to the bathroom.

- Lift up your sleeve.

Do you see it? - Mm-hm.