Our visiting hummer, whom my wife first spotted on 10/30, disappeared after
the morning of 11/2.  We hope it's on its way to Costa Rica!

With help from several Ospreyers, we tried very hard to turn it into a
black-chinned, but in the end I'm fairly confident that it was a late
ruby-throat. In the process, I've learned a lot about the difficulty of
ID'ing juvenile hummers. Unfortunately, none of my photos captured a spread
tail or enough clarity on the shape of the primaries. The key indicators
that we could see include:
1. The absence of tail pumping when approaching the feeder 
2. Bill length (shorter than one would expect from a BCHU)
3. Bright green back, with no evidence of buff coloring 
4. Apparent absence of any other physical features indicative of a BCHU
(since a later RTHU would generally be much more likely); and
5. Disappearance in the morning after a few days of intensive feeding
(reportedly typical of late RTHUs)

Each of these was suggested to me by one or more Ospreyers, to whom I am
very grateful. I also bought a copy of the Peterson hummingbird field guide,
which is a great resource.

It was great fun while it lasted. Keep your feeders full!

Jim Boughton  





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