At last light on May 6, a tiny hummer came into the feeders here at home. When these tiny things fly in, they look like ants playing Quidditch amongst a bunch of locusts. Anna's Hummingbirds are the most common here at home and they're GIANTS, relatively speaking. After seeing the giants knock about for long enough, a subtle change in hummingbird size really jumps out at you.
I snapped a series of pictures but didn't have time to make any adjustments for the low light levels. SO, I ended up with a series of seemingly black photos. Nice one.
In editing the photos, however, I cranked up the brightness and shadow reduction and was able to make out... well, that it's a hummingbird:
I thought it was probably a CALLIOPE HUMMINGBIRD based on size alone but didn't think the photos were good enough to prove anything. Well, in fact, take a look at the length of the folded wings. They come right up to the tail (and maybe extend past it a tiny bit). That field mark eliminates all the Selasphorus species in addition to Broad-tailed. That leaves me with, yep, a female CALLIOPE HUMMINGBIRD.
This morning, again in extremely low light, the bird returned and I managed a couple more crap photos:
So, with yesterday and today in the books, that makes for 5 days this spring that my feeders have hosted a CALLIOPE HUMMINGBIRD. Pretty cool for such an urban yard and a species that is flagged as a rarity here in Sacramento County....
