Who doesn't like hummingbirds, those little nuggets of color and quickness, visiting our flowers and our feeders? They are a fascinating group of birds, the only bird able to fly backwards—and even upside down for a short time—and, on a cold night can actually enter a state of hibernation called torpor, and can reduce their body temperature by half, and their heart rate to 50 beats a minute, down from 1,250 beats a minute while flying.
Hummingbirds are found only in the Americas, from tropical rain forests to mountain meadows, with the majority of the family found in the tropics. In North America they are mainly a bird of the western United States, with one exception, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird, the only resident hummer of the east coast.
Anna's Hummingbird
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In the United States, the greatest variety of hummingbirds can be found in southeast Arizona. A visit to any number of feeders in that region can produce many species, from the sparrow-sized Magnificent and Blue-throated Hummingbirds to rare species that travel up from Mexico through the Chiricahua Mountains like Lucifer, and White-eared, and Berryline Hummingbirds, found nowhere else in North America.
Our most common hummingbird here in central California is the Anna's Hummingbird. It is a year-long resident and non-migratory. I have been told there are nesting records of this species in every month here in our favorable climate of San Luis Obispo County. Like many hummingbirds, the Anna's has a diagnostic flight pattern used when displaying to females. The male will fly straight up to great heights, and then come rocketing straight down before an abrupt upward turn, forming a J pattern. They will produce a loud, high-pitched chirp at the bottom of the arc, which was recently discovered to be made by the wind through the tail feathers, not a vocalization.
Rufuous Hummingbird
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Two other hummingbirds in this county, the Rufous and Allen's Hummingbirds are recent arriving migrants, as you read this in early March, and can be quite common in certain locations. The two species are very similar in appearance, and in fact the females of the two are virtually identical in the field. Birders refer to females of this type using the Latin name of the genus, Selasphorus, to refer to females of either species. The male Allen's has a green back, while the male Rufous has an all red back—except for the small percentage of male Rufous hummers with a green back. Listen for the “zee-chuppity-chup” vocalizations of these two aggressive little birds.
Calliope Hummingbird
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The Black-chinned and Costa's Hummingbirds round out the more common of our hummers, and these are generally found away from the coast, in drier inland chaparral habitats. The tiny Calliope Hummingbird is seen rarely in this area and is always a treat. One of my favorite birding experiences was adding North America's smallest and largest birds, the Calliope Hummingbird and the California Condor to my life list on the same day on Mt. Pinos in Kern County in the early 1980's.
A hummingbird nest is a treat to find. About the size of a halved walnut shell, it is often held together with spider's web, and decorated with lichen bits. The males stick around just long enough to show off their finery and breed, and then it's the exclusive job of the females to make the nest and care for the eggs and young.
The majority of a hummingbird's diet consists of flower nectar, which they gather with an extremely long tongue. The birds do double duty as they transfer pollen from flower to flower, and the plants and the hummingbirds have evolved to accommodate each other. Hummingbirds also eat a wide variety of insects, especially when feeding young, and will pick small flying bugs out of the air, and will also glean caterpillars, and spiders, and other arthropods off of leaves and the bark of trees.
If you feed hummingbirds, use one part sugar to four parts water, and do not use food coloring in the water. The red on the feeder is sufficient to attract them. Hummingbirds will often make daily rounds, and will visit flowers in a certain sequence. It has been postulated that every square foot of this country has been visited at some point by some hummingbird.
The comedian Steven Wright wonders, that if a hummingbird eats its own weight in food each day, "why don't they just eat another hummingbird?"
