Naturally I stopped hauling things and picked up the binoculars. Pretty quickly I saw at least two male Rufous Hummingbirds - all rufous on the back, no green whatsoever. Bird 198 for the year!
This discovery eliminated a bit of a quandary I had about this species a few days ago. As we were departing for Death Valley, I saw a potential male Rufous Hummingbird on the phone line. It was nearly all rufous, with just a few green feathers on the top of its back. It then left the wire and began performing a display that included a series of steep dives, but no horizontal shuttling at the bottom. From what I read this flight pattern is done by the Rufous species, but the Allen's display has a single dive with a series of side-to-side "shuttles" I was not sure about the accuracy of an ID based on the display flight pattern. If anyone has opinions about this please let me know. The discovery of today's male Rufous Hummingbirds makes this a moot point.
No photos from today, but a couple of older ones of Rufous Hummingbirds:
Rufous Hummingbird March 2014
Rufous Hummingbird March 2014
After the addition of today's 1 species, the year's total stands at 198.
More later,
Glenn
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