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A Rare Hummingbird Two-fer Day

By Hummingbird Lover

Two rare hummingbirds in one day! Some of the photos are a little soft but they show the colors and marks of the birds so well I had to post them anyway. Rare to the US Berylline hummingbird and the rare to the US Plain-capped Starthroat hummingbird.

Photos taken at Santa Rita Lodge on May 22, 2016 in their nature area.

First the Berylline Hummingbird:
A rare hummingbird visitor the the United States from Mexico. There were none reported in the US in 2015, one for only a couple of days in 2014 and for about a week in 2013. They were more common in the early 2000s but fire destroyed much of it’s habitat that it traveled across to get up to the Sky Islands, as the mountain ranges of Southern Arizona are called. In 2016 since this siting there have been three reports for 2 days each in two locations.

Next the Plain-capped Starthroat Hummingbird:

Plain-capped Starthroat Hummingbird

By Hummingbird Lover

The Plain-capped Starthroat hummingbird put on a nice show at 3:45 this evening in the nature area of the Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon, Arizona with a second brief reappearance at 4:30pm. It came in several times throughout the day today (8/10/2016).

Here is a short video for those that can’t make the trip to southern Arizona to see it, and a nice memory for those that have been to the Santa Rita Lodge to see it. And a visual guide for those of you coming up to see it!

Plain-capped Starthroat hummingbirds are not common to the United States and only a few have been noted in Arizona in the Sky Islands.

The small hummingbird next to it is a Broad-billed hummingbird male. Plain-capped Starthroat hummingbirds are not distinguishable by sex, so this could be a male or a female.

Video by Deborah Carney, Hooked on Hummingbirds.