They nest as far as Canada and Alaska – a 2,000-mile trip! Monsters in Trucks / Tiny T.Every spring, hummingbirds spend the winter in Mexico and then fly north to make the most of the warmer weather.Clutch / Dragon Storm: Connor and Lightspirit.Fairytale Ninjas: The Glass Slipper Academy / Slugs Invade the Jam Factory.The Unbelievable Top Secret Diary of Pig.

Small Stanley’s Big List of Scary Stuff.

I was intrigued to learn that they can live to be nine years old – incredible! Jane Ray’s, stunning – as jewel-like as her subjects – detailed watercolour pictures almost vibrate with the Tz-unun! Tz-unun! of the hummingbirds’ wings, while tiny lines in her illustrations inject movement into the flight path of their long journey, 3000 kilometres northwards, and back.ĭropped into the spreads are such facts as what hummingbirds feed on their nest size, and other details of their journey and there’s a final page on which Nicola explains in detail how ornithologists have ringed and tracked hummingbirds over the years. Granny however is anticipating their arrival as she sits in her garden reading a special letter from her granddaughter now far away, while in her lap is a tiny eggshell wrapped in cotton wool and a newspaper cutting telling of hummingbirds nesting in Central Park for the first time. The days get shorter and it’s time once more for the hummingbirds to fly south though not all will make it safely to their destination. And there they set up home and later in the summer,Ī little girl walking towards the park spies on the grassy verge, evidence of ‘a visitor from Granny’s garden’. Through the USA and all the way to Canada. We then follow the birds’ migration route over several double spreads all the way from over the Gulf of Mexico,

Seated in her Grandmother’s lap, the girl is asked to “Keep still” as they proffer bowls of water to the birds and come they do ‘Tz-unun! Tz-unun!’ flashing their feathers and beating their wings. Using the framework of the loving relationship between a Mexican grandmother and her granddaughter, we experience the migration pattern of such birds that are soon to depart, bound for the north, perhaps as the grandmother tells the child, “they’ll visit you in New York City?” Nicola Davies is a champion of wildlife and the creature she has chosen here is a tiny one, smaller than a thumb and lighter than a penny, the ruby-throated hummingbird.

Hummingbird by nicola davies