ML30730381

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

Adult male seen sitting on the feeder for about 30 seconds. When the bird first landed on the feeder it gave a view of its back and side (same angle as in the attached photos), and I thought it was an adult male Black-chinned. Field marks were - green back and crown, grayish-green flanks, and what appeared to be a black gorget. Then the bird flew to another port of the feeder such that the bird was roughly facing me, thus changing the sun angle. As it perched and fed the gorget was now bright red. It fed at this latter location for at least 15 seconds and during most of that time the gorget was bright red in that sun angle (at times it would move its head and the gorget appeared black again). I live in MA and have Ruby-throats at my feeder all summer long. The gorgets of the males will frequently look like they are black, but with a turn of their head the gorgets will be red. I remained at the feeder for at least another hour watching for the bird to return and to try for a photo. During that time there were numerous visits of male Archilochus hummers. All appeared to have black gorgets. However, none of them perched on that other side of the feeder where the Ruby-throat had perched earlier which afforded a sun angle making the gorget appear red. As for tail pumping behavior - some pumped their tail while hovering, on at least a couple visits the bird did not pump its tail while hovering, and sometimes the bird sat on the feeder. Don't know if the tail pumping is definitive for Black-chin vs. Ruby-throat however. In other words, the Ruby-throat may well have re-visited the feeder but I wouldn't have known based on gorget color of these very similar species. I've attached two phone-scoped photos I took of perched Archilochus hummers seen after I saw the Ruby-throat. Both appear to have black gorgets, but both birds are perched in the same sun angle where even the Ruby-throat initially looked to have a black gorget. When the Ruby-throat showed a red gorget the bird was on the opposite side of the feeder. During this time I was about 25 m away from the feeder watching both with 10x binocs and with a 25x scope.

Technical information

Model

iPhone 6

ISO

32

Focal length

4.2 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/2.2

Shutter speed

1/199 sec

Dimensions

1283 pixels x 951 pixels

Original file size

287.4 KB