How Many Hummingbirds?

 When we first moved in here we put up bird feeders, with grain or suet for the regular birds, and with sugar water for the hummingbirds. I was especially interested in what hummingbirds we would get. I had always lived in northern places where you could expect one species regularly, with perhaps another species that would make a wrong turn in migration and occasionally appear in the midst of winter. I was sure Tucson, deep in the southwest, would turn up more variety.

We quickly learned we had three evidently year-round species, Anna's, Costa's and Broad-billed. The adult males of all three were brilliantly colored in breeding plumage, so we couldn't complain about the selection we had drawn. I had never before lived in a place that had so many species. But like a typical birdwatcher, I wasn't satisfied. I wanted more than three.

 

 

 

The thing that galled me is, I had almost certainly seen another species, and a real rarity to boot. Not long after we had moved in, I woke up early one morning and walked through the quiet house to one of our feeders outside a window, and there was a hummingbird on it. What I noticed at once is it had a strongly curved bill, and though I couldn't remember its name, I knew there was such a bird, and it was very special. Adult male hummingbirds usually have bright colors that serve to identify them, but sub-adult,  or female birds, often don't have distinctive marks and can be difficult to identify. This was one of those drabber birds, but I tried to memorize any marks I could see on it.

It flew away before I could wake up Cheryl to witness it with me. And it never occurred to me to try to photograph it. I looked up the books, which told me the bird I thought it was was the Lucifer Hummingbird. The special mark I had memorized was that the throat was pure white (hummingbird throats are often spotted or brightly colored), and that low down  on the throat were two or three dark, lozenge marks.

The bird I saw was exactly like the illustration of the sub-adult male Lucifer Hummingbird in The Sibley Guide to Birds, Second Edition (p. 298). I have never again seen a bird like that. But I was too new at looking at the hummingbirds here to trust my judgment. So, I was still at three species.

But then I began seeing a brownish species I couldn't make head or tails of, and I sent a picture I had taken of it to bird-watcher neighbors who in turn sent it to their friend who happened to be the author of the Peterson Guide to Hummingbirds of North America and she said it was a Black-chinned Hummingbird, and so that was my fourth species, and indeed I have now seen adult male Black-chinned examples that I can ID myself (though one has still never stopped so I could photo it).

 

 

 There is a species  (Broad-tailed Hummingbird) I thought I would never record on my property, because it stays up at the top of the mountains and never comes down, but the other day one, perhaps in migration up from Mexico, did travel through our yard, and spent two or three days coming to the feeders in our backyard, and even let me take a picture of it. It is a handsome bird with a bright red throat with a white bib beneath it, and a green crown to set off the throat and bib, and that is the fifth species, and a clear moral that if you wait patiently, new species will go on showing up. Who knows, one day even the Lucifer.