IDAHO HUMMINGBIRDS
(Rough Draft; Work in Progress)

Last updated: June 6, 2005

An Online Photographic Comparision of Key Identifying Features
(Unless otherwise stated, all photos © 2004-2005 Stacy Jon Peterson; taken with Nikon Coolpix 4500, macro setting; contrast enhanced / sharpened, etc., on MS Picture It! Photo version 7.0)

While this guide focuses largely on in-hand characters and is thus more useful for banders, astute birders with good optics and/or high powered photographic equipment can often capture many of these features in the field. In addition, this information may be useful to the layperson who is just interested in learning how these species differ, regardless of whether or not the features are visible outside the hand. This volume is likely to grow over time. At this point it is largely incomplete and contains limited usefulness for Black-chinned Hummingbird and a handful of photographs for other species. Hopefully we'll get these up eventually.... The immatures of Calliope and Broad-tailed may not be available for a while since Stacy is moving to Alaska before the young fledge in 2005. We'll have Rufous up there! If anyone would like to add their close-up, high quality photos for inclusion in this guide, please let me know.

Quick Guide to Terms. We age hummingbirds much like folks age race horses. Even though hummers hatch in the summer (generally), they have a birthday on January 1. During the year of their hatch (before January 1), they are considered Hatch Year (HY) birds. After January 1 following their hatch year, they are considered Second Year (SY) birds. The problem with hummingbirds is that they molt into adult plumage during their first winter, so in most cases when hummers come back to us in April or May after spending the winter in Mexico, they look entirely like an adult. They could be SY, TY (third year), or older, but since in most cases there's no way to tell for sure, we call them After Hatch Year (AHY). This catch-all phrase simply means they're in adult plumage and can't be aged more precisely -- other than knowing they didn't hatch "this" year! Male (M) and Female (F) are often abbreviated as such, so an AHY-M would mean a male that hatched sometime prior to the current calendar year.

Aside from certain plumage characteristics which vary from species to species, one fairly universal means of telling HY hummingbirds is by looking very closely at the maxilla (top half of the bill). When hummingbirds hatch, their bills are very short like most baby birds. They grow very rapidly over the next couple weeks of life. Somehow the bills remain very rough on the lateral edges of the maxilla (Fig. 1). This roughness, or "corrugations" in humbanding terms, will generally remain so for several months and will eventually wear off from the tip to the base over time. By the time most hummingbirds return to us in the spring their bills are very smooth (Fig. 2).

Figure 1. "Scratches" (corrugations) visible on the lateral edges of the maxilla of this Black-chinned tell us that this is an HY bird which hatched during the current calendar year. Here the corrugations cover between 80 and 90% of the bill; the tip is smooth. Figure 2. The largely smooth maxilla tells us this bird's an AHY (never mind that he was a beautiful male Black-chinned with full gorget)! In some individuals, the basal 10% or so of the bill will remain grooved throughout life -- a feature you can see here.

Hummingbird Feather Anatomy: Hummingbird have 10 tail feathers (retrices), five on each side. They are numbered from 1 to 5, with the retrix #1 (r1) being the two in the middle, and r5 being the outermost. They have 10 primary feathers and 6 secondaries. The primaries are numbered from 1-10 starting from the inside (p10 is the outermost wing feather (remige). The secondaries are numbered from 1-6 with s1 being adjacent to p1.

retrices
Figure 3. The 10 primaries on a hummingbird are
numbered from inside to outside as shown.		 Figure 4. The retrices of a hummingbird are numbered from inner to outer as shown. Note there are two of each, as the numbering system would mirror that shown on the other side.

Stacy's Illustrated Guide for Aging and Sexing Idaho's Hummingbirds -- While some of the key identifying features will be mentioned herein, this guide assumes you can identify the bird to species. There are a number of very useful books and articles on that topic. The two hummingbird specialty guide's I'd recommend are Sheri Williamson's Field Guide to Hummingbirds of North America in the "Peterson Field Guide Series," and Steve N.G. Howell's Hummingbirds of North America: The Photographic Guide. Those are incredible books, the former focusing on smaller in-hand photographs, and the latter well illustrated with larger photos in the natural setting.

Many (if not all) of the other popular field guides to North American birds fall woefully short when it comes to hummingbird identification. Except for adult males, this group rivals Empidonax flycatchers in difficulty, especially for the novice birder. For most banders, however, the problem becomes less of identifying the bird to species than assigning a proper age and sex to a female or immature hummingbird in the hand. The following information will hopefully make this process a little easier. Please provide feedback on the usefulness of this guide; I'm always open for suggestions on how to improve it.

Black-chinned Hummingbird -- Archilochus alexandri

Determining whether a HY Black-chinned is a male or a female can be difficult for a variety of reasons. This photographic guide will show the variation in HY males and females of this species so that banders and astute observers can make more accurate determinations of the age and sex of Archilochus hummingbirds in the field. As you will quickly determine from these guides, there's truth to what master bander Fred Bassett told me regarding sexing immature Black-chinneds: "In some cases you may just have to call the bird PAT" -- a reference to the sexually ambiguous character on Saturday Night Live.

Calliope Hummingbird -- Stellula calliope

The smallest hummingbird in North America, the Calliope is an incredible creature. It's newly discovered ability to apparently hybridize with Black-chinned Hummingbirds compounds identifying criteria, but in general it's pretty straightforward.

Broad-tailed Hummingbird -- Selasphorus platycercus

To me, female and immature Broad-tailed look more like big Calliopes than they do their closer relatives -- the Rufous. Their size, especially the tail length, should be a huge giveway in the hand.

Rufous Hummingbird -- Selasphorus rufus

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Hybrid hummingbirds (or presumed so; comments welcome!)

Hybridization in hummingbirds is not a new phenomenon (citation). They recently have been encountered with surprising frequency in the southern borderlands Arizona and Mexico (G. West, pers. comm). The first possible hybrids discovered in Idaho may represent new combinations not before reported in the scientific literature. See the website below for details on many hybrid hummer combinations.

Unique plumages

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