-Author, Pilot, Weatherman-
DAN TRUE
Hummingbird Gifts are the #1 gift item in America.
Your loved ones will enjoy watching mama hummers build nests, have babies and
return year after year, bringing with them their young who are now adults.
Hummingbirds captured my attention by way of a female golden eagle in Texas. One April morning, I sat in a small blind atop a house-sized flat boulder down in the Panhandle's Palo Duro Canyon. My cameras were poised, awaiting action in an eagle’s cliff nest. Mesquite, cholla cactus, yucca, and juniper grew in the canyon. A hundred yards to my right was the edge of a stand of tall red cedar covering several acres on lush ground watered by small springs oozing from the canyon’s walls. Behind me a quarter of a mile, sunshine sparkled a ribbon of rippling water meandering along the canyon’s grassy floor.
Off and on I had spent twenty years in the Palo Duro Canyon. Eight of those I lived in the ranch headquarters house of the 16,000-acre spread that included much of the canyon. Throughout that time I saw only two hummingbirds; one was perched on our chicken lot fence, the second briefly hummed around the head of a female golden eagle I was raising. Both sightings I dismissed as stray migrants that might have been blown off course by unusual weather. I did some necessary research, bought and mounted a feeder and filled it with fresh liquid every few days. After several weeks, I was gifted with visiting hummers. My life had just taken a drastic change.
Violet Crowned Male | Violet Crowned Female) | Female Allen's |
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Rufous Hummingbird male | Broad Tailed Female Hummingbird | Female Broad-billed |
Male Broad Tailed | Male Broad billed | Female Blue Throated by Ed Brown |
Female Anna's | Male Blue throated by Ed Brown | Female Berylline |
Male Berylline | Male Anna's | Female Rufous Hummingbird |
Surveyor's tape on tubing | Male Allen's | Female Allen's |
Male Ruby-throated w/pollen on head | Female Ruby-throated | |
hummingbird nest | hummingbird nest |
Many more beautiful photos are included in Dan's book Hummingbirds of North America.
See the "Books" section to order.
Here is a 4 minute video which is included with a 21 minute long video if you order the DVD listed below.
In 1877, Colonel Charles Goodnight established the first ranch in the Palo Duro. The middle segment has been transformed from Goodnight ranch land into a state park, with the colonel's first dugout preserved there, amid paving, tourist facilities, and concession stands. Seven miles above the park, is the rugged heart of Palo Duro Canyon, lays the sixteen thousand acre Currie Ranch. Here only eighteen miles southeast of Amarillo, time and progress have paused. With terrain too formidable for modern roads, this land has escaped that pressure. The estate remains as it was in 2000 B.C. The canyon is hushed enough for the red wolf to pad silently through cedar-forested game trails; remote enough for deer to browse in peace; and tranquil enough for the eagle to live and to nest.
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As a former weatherman for an Amarillo television station, I produced and narrated a weekly wildlife show called "True Nature". Here are a few of the many photos, I took with raised binoculars to the chocolate brown bird and the speeding eagle's wings harping in the wind.
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Lucy's first chicks. | Lucy going to her nest. | Greg feeding Lucy |
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Lucy feeding her chick. | Lucy in flight. | Lucy recovering from injury. |
Daughter Terry and Lucy talking. | Lucy with a full crop (tummy). | Lucy chasing a rabbit. |
Mockingbird irritating Lucy. | Lucy after a rabbit. | Wildlife in the Palo Duro Canyon. |
Lucy in flight. | Lucy landing. | Lucy's chick. |
Dan feeding baby Lucy. | Lucy hatching. | Lucy hatching. |
Dan checking Lucy's nest. | Banty hen brooding Lucy as a egg. | Aerial coyote hunters. |
Wild turkey. | Waterfall birth of the canyon. | Teenage Lucy. |
Teenage Lucy. | Lucy's first nest. | Lucy's first eggs. |
Lucy's canyon view. | Dan photographing Lucy. | Dan, an original torpedo chaser T-6 |