Arizona is home at least part of the year to almost twenty species of hummingbirds, more than in any other state in the union. Most of these birds can be found in the far southern part of the state where high mountain terrains create ideal environments for a number of breeds whose range is mostly in Mexico.
Several hummingbirds migrate through the state between winter homes in Latin America and breeding homes in the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Northwest. A species I've written about and photographed that makes this very journey is the rufous hummingbird. Indeed some of my favorite posts have been about his summer stops at my Prescott home. Now it turns out that at least on one occasion another migratory hummingbird has laid over at my home, but this time it was in sweltering Phoenix.
When I caught the birding bug three years ago I photographed every bird I saw. At the beginning, most pictures were poor but in the end they were helpful in identifying species. I regularly review and organize these shots, deleting the many grainy ones when I've succeeded in capturing crisper images. Occasionally in this process I stumble upon a shot of a bird I either couldn't identify or that I assumed was just one more picture of a favorite subject. It was this latter case when I realized I had experienced my one and only broad-tailed hummingbird encounter, and in my own backyard.
I captured a few images of this hummingbird early in the summer of 2016, a time when I was cutting my teeth on capturing high speed images of Anna's hummingbirds at my Phoenix feeder. It didn't occur to me that this individual was markedly different but maybe his spending a lot of time in some dense foliage should have been a clue. My pictures clearly show a male broad-tailed hummingbird, his ruby red gorget transitioning to emerald green on his head. (The Anna's magenta-colored gorget feathers continue up and over his crown.)
I suspect that this bird had migrated into the higher elevations of the Rocky Mountains and was returning to grounds further south after fulfilling his duty in a short breeding season. Clearly, he wasn't interested in child-rearing; a female was tending to any clutch he was the father of. With the desert monsoon beginning, Phoenix' bugs and flowers were his main interest on a lazy journey home.
Several hummingbirds migrate through the state between winter homes in Latin America and breeding homes in the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Northwest. A species I've written about and photographed that makes this very journey is the rufous hummingbird. Indeed some of my favorite posts have been about his summer stops at my Prescott home. Now it turns out that at least on one occasion another migratory hummingbird has laid over at my home, but this time it was in sweltering Phoenix.
When I caught the birding bug three years ago I photographed every bird I saw. At the beginning, most pictures were poor but in the end they were helpful in identifying species. I regularly review and organize these shots, deleting the many grainy ones when I've succeeded in capturing crisper images. Occasionally in this process I stumble upon a shot of a bird I either couldn't identify or that I assumed was just one more picture of a favorite subject. It was this latter case when I realized I had experienced my one and only broad-tailed hummingbird encounter, and in my own backyard.
I captured a few images of this hummingbird early in the summer of 2016, a time when I was cutting my teeth on capturing high speed images of Anna's hummingbirds at my Phoenix feeder. It didn't occur to me that this individual was markedly different but maybe his spending a lot of time in some dense foliage should have been a clue. My pictures clearly show a male broad-tailed hummingbird, his ruby red gorget transitioning to emerald green on his head. (The Anna's magenta-colored gorget feathers continue up and over his crown.)
I suspect that this bird had migrated into the higher elevations of the Rocky Mountains and was returning to grounds further south after fulfilling his duty in a short breeding season. Clearly, he wasn't interested in child-rearing; a female was tending to any clutch he was the father of. With the desert monsoon beginning, Phoenix' bugs and flowers were his main interest on a lazy journey home.
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| Broad-tailed hummingbird in my Phoenix backyard, July 2016. |
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