You are hummingbirds on the internet

24 Sep, 2025

You are hummingbirds on the internet. You are two families that grew up in a courtyard in the Buckman neighborhood of Portland, OR.

You are the first brood, The Paddleboats. You are the birds that taught me that, once the eggs hatch, and the mother seems like she abandoned you, she didn't. Your mother spends as little time as she can at the nest, so predators don't notice. You grew so fast. It seemed impossible that I got to watch you.

You are the ones I named the forum after that I made for my friends at the start of the pandemic. For that you will always be famous among a few people I know and love.

You are the second brood, the Bun boys. You taught me that hummingbirds return to their nests year after year, so humans shouldn't take them, no matter how much they want to. You grew big and strong but one of you didn't want to leave the nest, so we named you Cozy bun. I tried to start an online magazine called Bao, after your mom, during the pandemic, but that also didn't want to leave the nest.

Now I put you on example pages for my new internet thing, Octothorpes, which this blog is about. I suppose I shouldn't spam the hummingbirds hashtag with all these example pages, but when I try to think of what people would be delighted to see when they click on a website, I just think of your dumb little faces. And when Sophia announced an Indieweb Carnival theme of secondPersonBirds, well I knew I had to blog about you.