Return of the Bird of the Week: Black-tailed Trainbearer
Here’s a hummingbird species whose tail is even longer than its name. The tail of a Black-tailed Trainbearer – a pretty cool name for this species – is half again as long as its body. Perhaps to compensate, it has one of the shortest bills of the hummingbirds. The species favors open areas, gardens and parks. At higher altitudes, in the paramò, it can be fairly common. WC has seen the species in downtown Quito. Like many hummingbirds, it is surprisingly cryptic for all of the flash and color. The species is unusual in that it has three distinct, discontiguous…
Don Young – King of CoronaDenial
TALL TALES from Juneau Eyes on the Dunleavy Disaster It’s Day 4,836 of the stay at home mandate. At least that’s what it feels like. We hope you are all staying well, taking good care of yourselves and each other, and following the stay-at-home direction from the state. We need you. Now, on to the usual shenanigans: THE DC DELEGATION Congressman Don “I call it the beer virus” Young has stopped backpedaling, and is now OUTRIGHT DENYING that he poo-pooed this pandemic, urging high-risk seniors to go about their daily lives as though nothing was happening, just a few…
Return of Bird of the Week: Shining Sunbeam
Not all hummingbirds are called “hummingbirds.” Some have more poetic, sometimes charming names. Like the Shining Sunbeam. This is a large (for a hummingbird, anyway), dark-brown hummingbird with a lilac-gold iridescent lower back and rump. There are several Sunbeam species, and they have in common a proportionally short bill for a hummingbird. This is a high altitude species that inhabits semi-arid montane ridges and cloud forests. Most populations seem to be altitudinal migrants, descending during the tropical winter to lower elevations. WC has seen (but not successfully photographed) in Peru’s Abra Malagra Pass, at an altitude of 14,400 feet. It…
Juneau in the Time of Coronavirus
TALL TALES from Juneau Eyes on the Dunleavy Disaster Despite the slow-down in activity across the state, things have been hopping in Juneau. And as usual, most of the activity centers around the budget, the PFD, supplemental funding, and what to do with the limited funds we have. We’re cleaning up after a summer of natural disaster, and heading into an uncertain future of pandemic. And floor sessions in the House are the same old bare-knuckle fight we’ve become used to. This is because the minority wants you to know something. They want you to know that they really really…
Return of Bird of the Week: Speckled Hummingbird
Not all hummingbirds are spectacular. Some are a little drab. The Speckled Hummingbird probably goes on that list. But this is still a handsome bird. The Speckled Hummingbird’s range extends from Columbia to northern Chile in western South America, and it is pretty common across all of that range. Even for a neotropical species, the Speckled Hummingbird is poorly studied. Presently, it’s placed as the single member of the genus Adelomyia, with some seven (or maybe nine) subspecies, but the systematics are, as they say, doubtful. This species nests under the large ferns that grown under the tropical forest canopy in…
Return of Bird of the Week: Sparkling Violetear
This is a larger cousin of the Lesser Violetear posted a few weeks back. The extensive violet-blue patch on the belly differentiates it from the other Violetears. It’s also distinguished by behavior: this species energetically defends blooming flowers from all other species of hummingbirds, butterflies and even bees. It’s the dominant species at most hummingbird feeders in its range. This species has an extensive range, extending from Panama to Argentina, generally at mid- to high elevations. WC has seen it at 11,500 feet, but it ranges higher. It adapts well to urban gardens and parks. Except when feeding hatchlings, this…
Return of Bird of the Week: Talamanca Hummingbird
When WC first saw this species, it was called Magnificent Hummingbird. But ornithologists decided to split Magnificent Hummingbird into two species. So the Costa Rican subspecies became the Talamanca Hummingbird, and the more northerly subspecies became Rivoli’s Hummingbird. There is officially no longer a species with the common name, Magnificent Hummingbird. Which is too bad, because this species is pretty magnificent. The new name comes from the Cordillera de Talmanca, one of two mountain ranges in which the bird is found. While the species reportedly “fairly common,” there is very little research on it or its cousin, Rivoli’s Hummingbird. At…
Return of Bird of the Week: Rufous-tailed Hummingbird
The Rufous-tailed Hummingbird is one of the most common hummingbirds in southern Mexico, Central America, northern Columbia and western Ecuador. It’s medium-sized, as hummingbirds go, and packs about as much belligerence into its 5.4 grams as any bird on the planet. The reddish tail give the species its name, but it is a member of the genus Amazilia, composed of mostly similar-looking birds. The red tail is brighter and the chest uniformly glittering green, separating it from its congeners. There are five subspecies; this is the subspecies jucunda. Rufous-taileds usually lay two eggs. If you look closely at the photo, you can…
Return of Bird of the Week: Broad-billed Hummingbird
North America has hummingbirds, too. They aren’t exclusively neotropical. One of the North American breeders – just barely – is the Broad-billed Hummingbird, a smaller species. It’s primarily a Mexican species, but the breeding range extends a few dozen miles in to southeast Arizona and southwest New Mexico. Like most hummingbird species, the male’s job is mostly done after copulation; the nest is built by the female. The eggs are incubated and the chicks fed by the female. But take all that with a grain of salt. As Birds of North America puts it, “Gaps in our understanding of this species…
Return of Bird of the Week: Bearded Mountaineer
One of the charms of hummingbirds is that some of them have wonderful names. One such hummingbird is the Bearded Mountaineer. It’s called a “Mountaineer” because it’s a high elevation hummingbird, found exclusively between 2,500–3,900 meters in a few intermontane valleys in central Peru. Think about it: this is an area at 9,160 feet, a place where WC was gasping for breath just walking, and there’s this hummingbird that beats it wings 80 times per second without any trouble at all. The “Bearded” part of the name is also completely apt, once you see a male displaying: The photo doesn’t…