Just now, July 14th, I observed the first of season Calliope in my yard. Lordy they are tiny things. At first, watching the little thing hover over the feeder next to another bird that I could barely see, I wondered if it was sparing with a small oriole! No, of course not...but the other hummingbird seemed twice as big, by comparrison. (my photo here doesn't show what I mean at all! The other bird turned out to be a Rufus hummer...which IS nearly twice as big as the little guy I observed!)The Calliope Hummingbird is the smallest bird in North America (about 1/3 the size of our smallest warblers) and the smallest, long-distance migrant in the world...breeding in the Northwestern US and Canada and spending winters in Mexico.
6 comments:
Very cool. I'm happy for you. I haven't even seen my first Rufous down here in central NM, yet, but should be any day, now.
Thanks, Bill! Yeah, very cool!!!
I liked 'following' the birds' progress down WY and CO till they got here; so I post on your Burque Birding site (regarding who's seen hummers), too. What fun... I imagine you can judge when they might arrive the same way I did.
Hope your summer is going well.
Smallest bird, but interestingly, has the largest hear proportionate to its body mass at 20%. I love these useless facts.
...my dad used to ask "Where do you glean these useless bits of superfluous information?" LOL I like that kind of stuff, too. Hmmmmmm…I’m assuming you were talking of the bird’s head; dang, I wonder if it’s especially smart, too.
Wow..just catching up on your blog.
How lucky you are to have such cool hummingbirds come to your feeders!
I have seen both of those hummers in Arizona..beautiful birds..
take care
Dawn
Hiya Dawn,
Yes, it's great fun to have so many hummers in the yard. Apparently a total of twelve species have been spotted, at least once, in this county...I only see the four. Some are pretty darn rare, though...
Thanks for stopping by!
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