Thursday, July 26, 2012

My hummingbirds

When I first moved back to Tucson more than twenty years ago, I knew almost nothing about hummingbirds. I didn’t know, for example, that they spend a great deal of time just perching, in between trips to flowers or the nectar feeder. I didn’t know that they eat a lot of insects (you have probably seen them doing this, even if you didn’t know that’s what it was—they hover in mid-air, making jerky movements as they snag microscopic bugs). I didn’t know that many of them migrate long distances—more than 2,000 miles—and over barriers as formidable as the Gulf of Mexico. And I had no idea that I would have so many species of hummers right in my own backyard.

As I wrote in the previous post on learning Arizona birds, I didn’t know one bird from another when I first arrived here. But hours in the backyard with binoculars and hummingbird books taught me to identify the six or seven species that eventually came to my tiny yard.

Male Costa’s hummingbird  Costa with pollen 10-21-2009 5-53-24 AM 637x920purple guy 1-18-2007 1-01-02 PM 336x304

These included Anna’s, the most common; Broad-billed, the second most; and Costa’s, Rufous, Broad-tailed, and Black-chinned.

Anna1.bmpMale Anna’s hummingbird

I never did get very good at identifying female hummers, most of whom tend to look a lot alike, but I did get to know all the males. On this page are a few pictures of “my” hummers from those early years. In my next post I’ll introduce the three most memorable hummers to visit my yard.

blackchinmMale Black-chinned hummingbird; not my photo

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:12 AM

    Hummmm. Watching hummingbirds is a great part of life in Tucson. At the moment all I get is an occasional Ruby at my honeysuckle vine. S

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    1. It's strange but true: I have never seen a Ruby, though I've seen Magnificent, Blue-throated, Violet-crowned, Calliope, etc. To me the Ruby-throated is the true exotic!

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  2. I'm still jealous that we only have one kind of hummingbird here --the Ruby-throated that you've never seen. You should come visit.

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    Replies
    1. Maybe we can do a home-share sometime.

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  3. Love the little "jewels of the air"!
    The females sure are harder to I.D.!
    -Carol

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    1. The only ones I'm ever 100% sure of are Rufous and Broad-billed, and even with Rufous, it could still be Allen's. If an Anna's has a small gorget, she can be ID'd with some certainty, but the other guys--the Costa's and black-chinned--forget it!

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