- Feb 5, 2002
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While Mélanie Barboni was growing up in Switzerland, she wished for nothing more than to see some real, live hummingbirds. Her big break came in 2014, when she became a researcher in the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Knowing that the city was home to all sorts of hummingbirds, she attached a nectar-filled feeder to her office window and soon welcomed her first guest: an Allen’s hummingbird she named “Squeak.” Over the next few years, Barboni expanded her collection to four 80-ounce feeders to accommodate the 200 or so hummingbirds that came to rely on them. If the feeders weren’t full when the birds arrived for their next feast, they’d zoom right through the window to “yell at” Barboni. “They are so demanding, but they know I will give them everything,” she joked in a UCLA press release from 2016.
Continued below.
Watch Mélanie Barboni, the Geologist Known as ‘The Hummingbird Whisperer,’ in Action
Knowing that the city was home to all sorts of hummingbirds, she attached a nectar-filled feeder to her office window and soon welcomed her first guest: an Allen’s hummingbird she named “Squeak.” Over the next few years, Barboni expanded her collection to four 80-ounce feeders to accommodate the 200 or so hummingbirds that came to rely on them. If the feeders weren’t full when the birds arrived for their next feast, they’d zoom right through the window to “yell at” Barboni. “They are so demanding, but they know I will give them everything,” she joked in a UCLA press release from 2016.
Continued below.
Watch Mélanie Barboni, the Geologist Known as ‘The Hummingbird Whisperer,’ in Action
