operation save baby hummingbirds and other news

oh hai!
i know i know, i dropped off the face of the earth. if you have been following my blog for long you should be used to my blog hiatus's by now. :/ ha
now on to the juicy stuff!
i had a very amazing experience with a little hummingbird that had built her little hummingbird nest right outside my living room window. here is the short version of the story (with pictures)

brief background: i first noticed my little hummingbird friend (whom i have named dorothy) about a month ago, she built her little nest in the avocado tree that shelters my driveway. the branches extend over the driveway and almost all the way to my house. i park my car under said tree branches. her nest is about 3 feet from my window, i can see everything she does and it is so awesome to watch her. i love her very much.

the story: friday night i am sitting at my desk making something and i hear strange noises and notice my flood light outside going on and off. turns out, my cat sparky had torn the nest down! all i saw was white shredded nest all over my black car. i go outside to investigate and this is what i find on my windshield:


i almost didn't see them. the egg in the picture is a partially hatched baby and the baby, well, is a healthy little baby humming bird that clearly had just hatched earlier that day.
my cat had COMPLETELY destroyed the nest, i was at a loss as to what to do, but clearly i couldn't just leave them to die on my windshield. so i quickly brought them inside and made a little makeshift nest with some wool felt and a plastic tub and put them next to a heater while i tried to find a solution to this problem.

during a frantic phone call to a sweet and lovely mr. allan leavell, he suggested to me that perhaps i should use my skills to make a new nest to replace the destroyed one. (for the record, i thought this was a crazy idea, but what else was i going to do about it at 12am) so, i got out some wool roving and proceeded to needle felt a new nest. i thought it was a shot in the dark, but there was nothing to lose. the babies were far too tiny to be nursed by a human. i was able to salvage some of the super soft lining the mama had used and line the inside of my nest. (see the baby in there?)


SO i made the nest, put the babies in the nest and hot glued the nest back up into the tree where the old nest had been. really not sure if it would work or not. all i could think about for the rest of the night was if those little birds were out there freezing to death because mama didn't come back.
FIRST thing in the morning i go and look to see if they had survived and this is what i see:

mama hummingbird sitting on her babies in the nest i made!
i have officially done a collaboration with a hummingbird. cool!

so anyhow. in other news.
many changes have taken place in the last few months, one of them being, hi tree studio moving back into my house. now, you might think this is a bad thing right? negative growth? nooooo. not at all. my one year stint having hi tree in the avenue 50 studio was PRICELESS. the people i met (sonia romero) and all the art walks and shows i took part in were such a great experience for me as an artist. but now, i need to be able to work as much as possible and one thing that i have learned from having my studio located somewhere other than my house is that, well, its really hard to create on time constraints! 9-5 doesn't cut it for me. i like to work in the middle of the night or whenever i feel like it, and i can't do that as a single mother and a studio 8 blocks away from where i spend most of my time. i am so excited! and relieved!