Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Identification

The adult male carries a gorget of iridescent scarlet that can read as a black hole in the throat when the light is wrong — angle is everything with this bird. Above, the back and crown are metallic grass-green; below, the belly and flanks are greyish white; the tail is dark and forked with small white tips on the outer feathers. Females and immatures show no red at all: the throat is clean white, sometimes with faint dark speckling down the centre, the back is the same green, and the tail is broader with larger white corners. Across most of its range it is the only hummingbird present, so the real identification work is ruling out western vagrants — check the throat first, then the tail pattern.

In hovering flight the wings beat better than 50 times a second. The bird can fly forward, backward and briefly upside down, but it cannot walk; the legs are for perching and scratching only. It feeds every ten or fifteen minutes through the day, taking nectar from tubular flowers and hunting small flies, gnats and spiders for protein, which matters most while chicks are growing. Southbound birds fatten until they weigh nearly twice their lean mass, then many cross the Gulf of Mexico in a single nonstop flight of 800 km or more. Males arrive on the breeding grounds ahead of the females and immediately claim a patch of flowers, driving off bees, butterflies and other hummingbirds along a chase route that stays much the same day after day.

In the east, the first males reach the Gulf coast in March and follow the flowering north through spring. A patch of red or orange tubular flowers — salvia, coral honeysuckle, trumpet vine — is more dependable than any feeder; if you do hang one, mix one part plain white sugar to four parts water, skip the red dye, and change it every two days in hot weather. The southbound movement in September is fast and concentrated, and a single garden can host a different bird every day for a week.