Costa’s and Anna’s hummingbirds in Las Vegas NV – still at my feeder

                Here we are in the middle of September. The only hummers I see at my feeder in Las Vegas NV are Costa’s and Anna’s.  If there are others around, they aren’t advertising their presence. I regularly hear and see the Costa’s and the Anna’s.

                Anna’s hummingbird seldom stays around long enough for me to get the camera, turn it on, focus and snap a picture. Therefore I can’t record my sightings, even though she at time hovers right in front of my face. One day I was checking the north side feeder just at sunrise, when along came a very offended female Anna’s. She hovered a short distance away and then flew off before I had a chance to leave the area.

                The Costa’s hummingbird, on the other hand, is not affected that much by my presence. He sits at the west side feeder and ignores me at the door. He stays around while I take picture after picture. Consequently I have lots of pictures of the male Costa’s hummingbird.

                One great thing about photography is pictures give you time to exam the details that the living bird doesn’t grant you. Often, after I have put the photo through the photo editor, be it Snapseed, PicShop or Aviary, I am amazed at what I have captured in pixels. (We can’t say ‘on film’ anymore, times have changed and hence our vocabulary must change as well.)

Male Costa's posing for a picture

                The first picture that really revealed those details to me was of the Costa’s male on August 7, 2013. He was at the feeder and paused for me to take his picture. When I put it through Aviary and used the Arizona filter – which acts to brighten the picture and bring out the details, but tends to turn it slightly pink – I could see this was a bird that had just finished its molt. I could see that the feathers were just coming out of the pin stage and hadn’t yet smoothed out, giving the bird a really rough look.

                Since I had a pet parakeet as my constant companion when I was young, I am very accustomed to seeing this stage of the molt. Wild birds don’t get as close as pets so I don’t remember seeing it in other birds until I saw it in the picture.

                The second picture of the Costa’s male hummingbird was taken September 13, 2013. This one also had a rough look to it, just not as rough as the first. I wondered if it was a young-of-the-year male that had just come into its full plumage. This one is a little harder to see so I can’t be sure.

Taken in late afternoon the sunlight shinning on the feeder is reflected onto his breast.

                I am sad that the other hummers have left me, but then I remember when I had feeders up north I took them down the middle of September because the last straggler, usually a Rufus male, would come sometime around the 14 of September and then they were all gone. There was no reason to leave the feeders up after that. At least here I can keep my feeders going all winter and still have visitors on a regular basis.