11/13/2023 0 Comments Diy hummingbird feeder perchWe live by the sea, so we get a very interesting and rare mix of seabirds and song birds and it’s the most delightful experience. One of the biggest joys of my day is watching the birds land in the apple tree just outside my office window. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.Inside: Fill your garden and yard with birds with these DIY homemade bird feeder ideas made of plastic and recyclables, made of wood and special feeders for small birds like hummingbirds and woodpeckers! “I believe God gives life and God takes it, but we do everything possible.”Ĭopyright 2023 The Associated Press. There are the sleek black grackles that attack the birds and destroy their nests, as well as constant construction projects that replace flower gardens with concrete.īut Lattouf remains optimistic and is betting on other bird lovers planting more flowers to feed the great pollinators. The city is filled with threats to hummingbirds. Many of them do manage to return to the wild, but the ones who die under Lattouf’s care are buried near her building between small plants. Their release comes in a wooded area on the city’s southside. Then she moves them to a neighboring room to prepare them to eventually be freed. They stay there until they are strong enough to fly and feed themselves. Most of the hummingbirds are in the bedroom where Lattouf sleeps. Together with her collaborator Cecilia Santos, who she calls the “hummingbird nanny,” they care for the birds in long days that stretch from 5 a.m. Lattouf says she never turns away a bird. Someone put a video about her work on the social platform TikTok that has been viewed more than 1.5 million times. Since May, the demand for her services has jumped. Some have infections from drinking contaminated water from hummingbird feeders, which are popular in the city. Some have injuries to wings after colliding with things or falling from nests. She began studying how to better care for the birds that are native to the Americas and usually weigh just 4 to 6 grams (a fifth of an ounce or less) and are about 10 to 12 centimeters long (4 to 5 inches long). Later, friends and acquaintances began bringing her more hummingbirds. Her illness had pushed her to sell her five high-end boutiques to focus on her recovery. It helped pull Lattouf out of the sadness and loneliness she had experienced after her husband’s 2009 death followed by her own bout with cancer. “It wrote me a new life,” she said of the nine months the bird lived with her. The bird became her inseparable companion, perching on her computer screen while she worked. She named it Gucci after the brand of the glasses case she kept it in. It started with one hummingbird that had an eye injured by another bird.Ī veterinarian friend encouraged her to try to help it. With dozens of the tiny birds buzzing overhead, along walls and the window of her bedroom, Lattouf explained that she began caring for them a year after surviving colon cancer in 2011. In Mexico, there are some 57 species and around 350 across the Americas. Her improvised clinic also supports more formal institutions like the Iztacala campus of Mexico’s National Autonomous University, which sometimes refers cases to her due to a lack of resources, time and space, said one of its researchers, the ornithologist María del Coro Arizmendi.Īrizmendi said there are 22 species of hummingbird in Mexico’s sprawling capital, of which the broad-billed and the berylline hummingbird are the most common. Lattouf, who studied French literature, has become a reference source for bird lovers, amateur and professional alike, across Mexico and other parts of Latin America. This is often how Lattouf’s days have gone since she turned her apartment in Mexico City’s Polanco neighborhood into a clinic for sick, injured or infant hummingbirds, about 60 of which currently flit around. “It is a broad-billed hummingbird,” the 73-year-old Lattouf said, as she moved an eyedropper to its beak. A young man who rescued it after it fell from a nest onto his patio watched attentively. Under Lattouf’s caress, the bird relaxes little by little, allowing her to evaluate it. Are you very hungry?” It’s the newest patient at her apartment in a toney section of Mexico City where she has nursed hundreds of the tiny birds back to health over the past decade. MEXICO CITY – Gently holding a baby hummingbird between her hands, Catia Lattouf says, “Hello, cute little guy.
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