I agree with Bob and Shawneen. Young Anna's Hummingbirds are often behind
reports of stray Costa's and Black-chinned Hummingbirds. They are the juvenile
Red-tailed Hawk of the hummer world. Whenever you see a nondescript
green-backed, pale-bellied hummer that you are challenged to ID, the first and
last question to ask yourself is, "Why isn't this an Anna's?"
Dave Irons
Beaverton, OR
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 9, 2017, at 9:19 PM, Shawneen Finnegan
<shawneenfinnegan@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:shawneenfinnegan@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Bob Archer, you just beat me to the answer :-)
This looks like a young Anna’s Hummingbird to me. It has that thick-necked and
stocky look of an Anna’s.
The wing shape is fairly even in width, a feature of the genus Calypte (Anna’s
and Costa’s).
Costa’s are big headed, too, but smaller and paler gray below. Young Costa’s
tend to be grayer or perhaps browner and more scaled looking plumage-wise and
are fairly compact.
It is not a Black-chinned based on overall shape and the shape of the
primaries. Black-chinned and Ruby-throat, both Archilochus, have different
width primaries with the inner six being narrower than the outer primaries. And
the way to tell Black-chinned from Ruby-throat is to look at the shape of the
outermost primary. On Black-chinned this feather is more bulbous or club shaped
at the tip, while Ruby-throat is pointed.
Shawneen
On Aug 9, 2017, at 5:12 PM, Beverly Hallberg
<mapsout@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:mapsout@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hi everyone,
I took some pictures of this hummingbird in my backyard in Manzanita on August
3rd. It looks very much like the Costa's Hummingbird female that visited my
backyard last year between August 7 - 28. I was hoping to get more pictures
of it, but I've not seen it again yet. There are regular hummingbird wars over
the 3 feeders that are out.
Any thoughts on identification? 4 pictures are in a Flickr album.
https://flic.kr/s/aHsm669xj3
Thanks, Beverly
