The Networked Bird Observatory Blog

Check out these two hummingbird shots from yesterday afternoon. First is a shot by whereismyrobot, taken at 4:38 p.m.:

This one is by avatar99, taken at 5:51 p.m.:

These look a lot like the male Ruby-throated we’ve seen, except for that strip of blue along the bottom of the gorget. I can’t figure that out at all.

Is that color really there? Could it be an odd artifact of the camera’s response to the bright iridescence of the gorget? I’ve seen some odd camera effects relating to color in the past, but I’ve never noticed anything like this. But if that color is real, that’s a really unusual-looking hummingbird that I can’t match up with anything in my field guide.

Update: I just noticed that two other shots from yesterday have now been classified as Black-chinned Hummingbird, and that makes me wonder: Could this blue we’re seeing in the above shots be the camera’s response to the black-and-purple of the Black-chinned’s throat? (Later update: Oh, and vireo wondered the exact same thing in a comment posted at the same time I was entering the above update.)

Here are the two shots that have been classified as Black-chinned. I’m not sure I agree that they’re definitive, but they’re certainly interesting, and the second shot, especially, has me leaning in the Black-chinned direction. Both shots were by birdbrain, from 6:03 p.m. and 6:08 p.m., respectively:

Anyway, congratulations birdbrain!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 6:24 am and is filed under Records and Rarities, The Birds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.