Meet the girls!

You were introduced to Rosie (photo of her above) in my previous post. She was the first Anna’s hummingbird to ever show up here and stick around – for six years now! So she is probably an ancestor to much of the current hummer population in my neighbourhood.

Female Anna’s hummingbirds – like most bird species – are not as brightly coloured as the males. However, as you can see from this pic, they are not exactly drab, either. Although in some lights they look dull and greyish, when the light catches them right, the main part of their body is bright and iridescent, almost metallic: some gleam like emeralds, some flash olivey-yellow, and some shine with hints of sapphire.

And then that throat spot: although it often looks dark and greyish, you can see in the photo above that, when the light catches it, it gleams ruby red.

The throat spot is the main way that I identify my individual females. Every bird has a uniquely shaped patch on her throat. The first year that Rosie was around the winter of 2014-2015, it was just her and one other female. The second year, it was Rosie and two different females. The third year, was a real surprise. I put a lot of time into the photography, and was able to distinguish around 30 individual birds that winter: mostly females, but occasionally a male.

The third winter that I had hummingbirds around, I began to realize that there were actually quite a lot of different female birds here! Rosie had not returned (yet), and I didn’t recognize anyone else, so I started by numbering them. Here are a few of the girls who have been special in one way or another:

Number 15 (below) was a sweet little bird. She was extremely easy to recognize, even from a distance, because her chin patch was so big and dark, with a small notch on the left side. I had so many hummingbirds that winter of 2016-2017 that I set up extra feeders on the sides of the house – basically anywhere I could find that was out of sight of other feeders (around corners, under balconies, behind bushes). Number 15 took over the feeder by the woodpile, and sat day after day on this splinter of wood. When Rosie left the back yard in early spring (to nest, I assume), Number 15 took over her territory for a month or so, then she disappeared too.

And below – here’s a short video of Rosetta. She is new (I think! – I will have to find the time to go through my old photos to be sure). This year, the males have taken over the yard; there is one male guarding each side of the house, and the females have been struggling to sneak in to feed. Rosetta is the one exception: in good weather, she sits boldly on the rose bush (which she is named after) that sticks up from the hedge beside my driveway, and if it rains or snows she flits up to sit on the twigs at the balcony.

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