'First Flight' to be featured at Petstacular Pet Fair, Feb. 27

Special to View"First Flight, A Mother Hummingbird?s Story" documents the lives of a hummingbird family living in a nest in the Sunrise-area yard of Don and Norika Carroll. Special to ViewPreliminary sketches for a "First Flight, A Mother Hummingbird?s Story" animation project may be among work Don and Noriko Carroll share at the Petstacular Pet Fair on Feb. 27. Advertisement

Don and Noriko Carroll, a Sunrise-area couple who wrote a book and created a film about the hummingbirds in their backyard, have made the first steps on their next hummingbird project, an as yet untitled animation piece.

The couple moved to Las Vegas in 2002 and discovered the birds before they had even unpacked. A sign on their back porch read, "Be Careful!! Hummingbird's Nest Above!"

They watched in amazement as a hummingbird they later dubbed Honey began rebuilding the tattered nest perched in the middle of a clothesline. The professional photographers broke out their cameras and began shooting the photos that eventually would be used in their book "First Flight, A Mother Hummingbird's Story."

The Carrolls will be at the Petstacular Pet Fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Feb. 27 in the amphitheater of the Rainbow Library, 3150 N. Buffalo Dr. They will be showing excerpts from a documentary they produced, also titled "First Flight, A Mother Hummingbird's Story."

"When we finished the book, we weren't sure what the next project would be," Don Carroll said. "Then we looked out on the porch, and there was Honey, working on the nest again. Some people had already asked us about video, so it seemed the thing to do. We got the cameras and dove into it."

The Carrolls said the book and video are getting positive reviews from everyone who has seen it. They've managed to get it into shops in a number of museums, including gift shops at Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Smithsonian Institution.

"We just came back from a trip to Japan. I hadn't seen my parents in two years," Noriko Carroll said. "While we were there, we visited the Abiko City Museum of Birds, a big bird museum, and they're looking into carrying it now."

The Carrolls noted that there are no hummingbirds in Japan, and yet people love them. This is one of the reasons they're working on translating the book and the DVD into Japanese. French and Spanish editions are in the works, as well.

Their next project, animation pieces involving hummingbirds, is under way. In fact, they may unveil some footage at the Petstacular Pet Fair.

"Noriko is teaching herself how to do the animation. She's done some test pieces already," Don Carroll said. "It's not really done yet, but we want to show people this is the sort of line we're on. It may change quite a bit before we're finished. We are still deciding if we want to do 3-D computer animation."

The couple may have the final animation done by professionals with more experience in the field.

"We're really still in the planning stages," Noriko Carroll said. "I couldn't do it all myself."

The Carrolls have been sending their documentary around to a number of festivals and are working on getting it into more.

"It won a juried award in Estonia at the Pärnu International Documentary and Anthropology Film Festival," Don Carroll said. "I'm amazed. That's pretty good for a little backyard film."

Contact Sunrise and Whitney View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 380-4532.