Two Very Different Hummingbirds

It's 23 degrees at four o'clock this afternoon with a stiff east wind blowing.   Safe to say we're all freezing our tail feathers off.  What about those tiny, delicate looking hummingbirds we see zipping around our gardens?  Well  there are two very different hummingbirds that we may see. 

This time of year it's a safe bet that all the fair-weather-friend rufous hummingbirds are soaking up the sun along the Texas Gulf Coast or even farther away along the coast of Mexico.  They return in very early Spring and it's fun to read of their advance north on the on-line bird tracking  sites. In fact, a way too early rufous hummer has been spotted in northwestern Oregon this week.   Just in time for the deep freeze.  Sad to say, that little bird probably won't see summer, as they just aren't  cold weather survivors. 

The  cinnamon and green hummers you see in spring and summer are the rufous ones.  The males almost glow red in their mating finery. The throat, or gorget, is a dense fuchsia when it flashes in  the light.  

This time of year  we should be seeing only Anna's hummingbirds.  These little birds have greenish backs and what is called a "washed out grey" underbelly. I think it's kind of pretty: an oyster-shell grey.  But the great thing is that the males' heads are a full helmet of deep rose red, all the way down to the tops of the wings.  When the light catches that red, all the girl hummers swoon.  It is pretty remarkable.  And, they survive this kind of weather fairly routinely.

Anna's hummingbirds live year-round from southern B.C. to northern Mexico.  They stay on the west side of the Cascades for the most part, and  can be found on the lower mountain slopes as well as near the ocean. One way they  survive this killer weather by "going torpid" at night.  This means that they can lower their body temperature to almost the temperature of the surrounding air.  When that happens to a human, it's called death.  But hummers do this every cold night.  This causes their metabolism to run at about one-third its normal rate.  Because they need to continually stoke their super-fast metabolism, they would risk starvation trying to maintain it during especially cold times. 

On a cold night an Anna's will find shelter out of the wind, deep within a dense shrub or tree. I saw an Anna's one cold morning with a little cap of snow on his head.  I thought  for sure he was a goner.  But as the sun began to minimally warm the garden, he slowly opened his eyes, then shook his head till the snow was gone. He fluffed his feathers and zip, off he went in search of breakfast.

If you feed hummers during the winter they will love you if you switch out the icy feeder solution for gently warmed sugar water each morning.  But they will survive (or not) regardless of sugar water feeders.  They find lots of insects wintering in tree bark or just flying about.  The big danger comes with a silver thaw, when ice coats the branches and food  is locked in the deep freeze.

This winter I have two Anna's vying for space at the feeder.  They wait in the holly tree each morning, noisily challenging each other and then buzzing me in an effort to get me moving faster.  I look forward to seeing the slightly scruffy grey babies that they will bring to the feeder some warm March morning, when this weather is just a distant memory.