Arizona Hummingbirds

Arizona Hummingbi

PROBABLY THE BEST known hummingbird in Arizona is the Black-chinned. It appears in the great valleys of the state in February or early March and starts looking over situa tions in regard to a place to live and raise a family. The chosen site is in a valley or the mouth of one of our mountain canyons, up to about 5500 feet elevation.This hummingbird has a green back and sides. The male has a black throat with a white collar below. This black throat shows as a blue-purple area in such lights as reflect its beauty. The female does not have the throat marks.

After a location is picked out and the nesting site is decided upon they gather plant down from such plants as willows, milkweed, or thistle. This plant down is well worked to gether into a smooth appearing nest, held in place with plenty of spider web. Spider web is also used to firmly attach the nest to the limb, often at a fork. The nest will average about one and three-eights inches in diameter and an inch high on the outside, while the inside is one inch in diameter and five eighths of an inch deep. In this nest are deposited two small, chalky-white, ellip tical eggs.When the nest construction is started the male hummingbird disappears and incubation, which takes about two weeks, the feeding of the young, and the preliminary flight lessons are entirely the duty of the mother.

We once had a great thrill of seeing a mother Black-chinned build her nest outside the living room window in an apple tree. After two weeks incubation her two eggs changed from the chalk white to gray white and one morning there were two yellow-brown, worm like things, with wide gaping mouths which stretched up hungrily.The feeding worried us for the mother rammed her long bill down the throat of each baby and it wiggled and squirmed, but the result was good for they grew amazingly fast and at the end of the week they made a very respectable appearance. At two weeks they were beautiful hummingbirds. During this period the nest followed their growth and stretched and stretched. It had started as a hollow cup slightly turned in at the top and the day they left, it was a flat plat-form. This leaving was interesting too. On their eighteenth day they sat on the edge of the nest and buzzed their wings but made no effort to take-off. This practice they kept up for three days and then took to the air in short flights around that vicinity and finally out into the world.

The Costa's Hummingbird is a hummer of the Lower Sonora Zone or deserts in Arizona. They, too, are green-backed. The male has a most gorgeous gorget and forehead of purple or amethyst. This gorget has longer feathers that stand out from the sides of the throat. Under changing light it refracts and reflects light in a remarkable manner, appearing as burnished metal changing from royal blue, purple, amethyst, and even green.

One of the great bird experiences of our lives has been to establish the fact that the Costa's Hummingbirds remain the entire year in some warm sheltered canyon of Arizona. Several years ago we noticed in January that hummingbirds were feeding on the Chupa Rosa plant (this means hummingbird in the Mexican language), in the great warm basin below the Stewart Mountain Dam. Checking up on like areas in the McDowell Mountains we have seen Costa's Hummingbirds feeding on Chupa Rosa every month in the year.

The Costa's perform a nuptial dance as do most of the other hummingbirds. Last February ninth we were in the desert area near the Cave Creek Dam and saw it to advantage. The little hen had been feeding on the small trum pet flower of a low tree and selected a perch just inside the leaves when the male appeared, to perform a series of spectacular swoops, dives, and loops in the vicinity of the little lady. He would ascend to a height of eighty to a hundred feet and dive at the perch where she sat and then ascend to about the same height on the other side to make a giant U. This he repeated over and over. The air rushed through his wings and feathers with an ex tremely high pitched hum or zing. His speed was so terrific his path could be traced by the sound at lower part of his swing, and by sight at the top of his U as he slowed up to start down. After several minutes of this she flew away with him in pursuit.

The Costa's nests are started late in February

Their arrival is heralded by a great hubbub for the Broad-tailed resent their coming into the areas they have maintained all summer, but after a series of fights they all settle down to the areas taken over by each bird. The Rufous is a pugnacious creature and maintains perhaps more territory than any other bird that occupies the area. They take over a district which they overlook from a high perch and if other birds come into that country they fly at them and drive them out. They seem to take over only as much as they can protect and look over diligently, keeping its boundaries as accurately as we do with a barbed-wire fence.

This pugnaciousness among the young males we considered as playing and training until Fall 1939. We saw two start fiercely flying at each other and rising in the air for advantage. Neither would give up and continued this charging until one fluttered to the ground and died in a few minutes. That little body was the hardest particle of flesh you could ima gine, for the wing muscles were not only in the breast as in a chicken but the entire length of the body. All this muscle is needed to drive the wings forty to fifty wing beats per second in a hovering position, up to seventy wing beats per second in flight. The Eastern Hummingbird has been recorded in a four hundred mile non-stop flight across the Gulf of Mexico.

These four species represent the great number of hummingbirds which are liable to be encountered in one's travels about Arizona. That A great thrill experienced when one sees the uncommon species is also possible in Arizona. The greater possibilities are in the Huachuca Mountains which touch the Mexican Border in Cochise County. In Miller Canyon at about six thousand feet elevation we found a mother Blue-throated, a larger hummingbird, brooding her eggs in a nest on a sycamore limb made to look like the bump so common on these trees. In the Huachuca, Chiricahua and Santa Catalina one might encounter the Rivoli's Hummingbird, the largest North American hummer or the more rare White-eared Hummingbird.

The Broad-billed Hummingbird, a pugnacious fellow, has been seen by us only twice; once at Stewart Mountain Dam in January and at Pinal Peak near Globe in summer. Their gorget is a metallic-blue. The lucky shot in this series of photographs is a Broad-billed. We had a camera set up to take a Rufous Hummingbird on an Agave Paryi and in popped a Broad-billed only long enough for us to snap the shutter.

Mrs. Costa's Hummingbird spends about two weeks at this task with only short trips off to eat. Note length of wings. Short rests between feeding periods is the practice of hummingbirds. This Rufous is enjoying this relaxation.

Mrs. Costa's two pea sized eggs are deposited in a nest of plant down tied with spider webs.

The Calliope Hummingbird, a dainty fellow, we have seen during migration in the Superstition Mountains.

Other Arizona records, of birds not common, are; Anna, Allen, Lucifer, Heloise's, Salvin's Hummingbirds. The last three are based on records of one or two birds seen many years ago.

Let us give due warning before you start making friends with the Hummingbird. We and all our friends who have attempted it have fallen to their charms and plant Trumpet Vine, Wild Tobacco and Petunias around our houses for them to feed upon. Many friends put out phials of sugar and honey water for them to sip, and we all seem to be unable to pass a Chupa Rosa, Century Plant, or Arizona Thistle until we have made sure it is not the feeding table of the hummingbirds.

We have seen the Broad-billed Hummingbird only twice in Arizona.

It has been found that in this hovering position a hummingbird's wings make from forty to fifty beats per second.