Black-chinned Hummingbird in the Backyard

I'm not done with my posts on Hawaiian birds; I finished with the natives, but there are lots of other birds to see there. But in the meantime, in the immortal words of Dorothy of Oz, "There's no place like home". I was told in no uncertain terms by the birds in the backyard to refill the birdfeeders. There was noise all day, but the most insistent individual was a little female Black-chinned Hummingbird (Archilochus alexandri). It quite literally flew by my face, landed on the mostly empty feeder, then perched in the nearby Crepe Myrtle tree and stared at me. The message was clear...

The Black-chinned Hummingbird is a western species with a range extending from Washington to southern Mexico and eastward as far as Texas. They do well in urban settings (they love feeders) so their population has been increasing. I've seen quite a few of them along the Tuolumne River.