Volume 10 , Issue 17

Butterflies Are Free! Are Hummingbirds?

Hummingbirds are Free! With the opening of one of our irrigation canals towards mid-week, we have also seen, April 24, 2008, our first Hummingbird scouting out our sweetened Hummingbird feeders that we put out a few days earlier.

Types of Hummingbirds -- Durango, Colorado has only 3 common hummingbirds, and a few uncommon ones: Broad Tailed, Black Chinned, and Rufous. I?ve heard there are occasional visits by the Blue Throated hummingbirds (Lampornis clemenciae), and Calliope hummers (Stellua calliope).

The Broad Tailed hummingbird is the easiest of all the hummingbirds to recognize, since the male emits a constant chirpy whistle from his wings during flight. He is mostly green with a rose-red gorget. The female has tinges of brown throughout her green, she does not make a constant noise, in fact, she tends to be quite stealthy. The female?s gorget is speckled slightly, but not the brilliant red of the male. In 1997, the broad tails showed up at the end of April here in Durango.

The Black Chinned hummingbirds are a tad smaller than the Broad tails, but no less spectacular, they have a black chin, hence the name... Under the black on their chin is a iridescent streak of purple on the males. The males also have a wing whistle, but it is much less pronounced and a lot more silent than the Broad Tail. The females are very similar to the Broad Tailed females, with a white underside and greenish brown top. Again, there is not much on the throat.

The most aggressive of the three, Rufous hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus) arrives a bit later in the summer. Again a wing whistle for the males, but it?s more of a buzz than a whistle. Don't be fooled by popular images of hummingbirds as symbols of peace and tranquility in the garden, these are among the most aggressive, malicious creatures on earth, and if they were the size of pigs, we'd all be in grave danger. The males are rufous (reddish rusty orange) on the sides, and top with a patch of white on the chest, and an Orange-red gorget. The female is similar again to the Broad Tailed with he exception of more brown, and an Orange-Red Gorget. Each year these guys make the trip from Mexico to as far as Alaska. It?s nice to help them along their way with lots of FLOWERS.
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