Got baby hummingbirds?
Every now and then I receive an email that goes something like this:
"I've been seeing a baby hummingbird coming to my flower garden. It's a tiny little thing compared to other hummingbirds I see. How long does it take them to become fully grown?"
Again, we'll turn to Cornell's BNA on-line in order to investigate the possibilities. In Wisconsin the overwhelmingly predominate hummingbird species is the Ruby-throated Hummingbird:
"Fledgling mass substantially greater than normal adult mass (4.85 vs. 3.3 g for average adult female). Mass often decreases sharply, presumably until foraging skills develop."
Growth of Ruby-throated Hummingbird nestlings (solid line, mean weight in grams, n = 4; dashed line, mean exposed culmen length in millimeters, n = 4; RRS). Figure adapted from Calder 1993.
Some recently fledged Ruby-throated Hummingbirds may actually appear to be slightly larger than an adult. So, what are these people seeing in their flower gardens? There are a few possible explanations:
- It's the rare and exotic Northern Pygmy Hummingbird.
- An observational error judging the size of a typical hummingbird.
- It's an insect - a Hummingbird Clearwing Moth.
It's fascinating how adamant some people can be, persisting in the belief they've observed a bird and not an insect even after being presented with the evidence and a reasonable conclusion. But if you're certain that it's a bird and not an insect, please, take a photograph of it if you can!
Ruby-throated Hummingbird © image 2006 Mike McDowell
posted by Mike McDowell @ 2:33 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Size is one thing that people get wrong about birds most often. I have people insist crows are as large as eagles as so forth. As a photographer/optics expert, maybe you can shed some light on how people's perception of size changes or gets distorted depending on distance. It must be something along those lines, because you are right -- people are very sure what they are seeing is smaller or larger than I say it is!
I recently watched a very interesting report on the OgoPogo, a cryptid lake monster of British Columbia. They actually had film of... something... which they estimated to be oh, 100 feet long or so. Researchers recently put a boat of known length in the water at the same spot and observed it, coming to the conclusion that the thing filmed was a third that size. People just aren't good at estimating sizes of totally unknown things without good reference points.
I would out photographing "baby hummers" this morning. Got home and googled my thoughts on the subject only to find the baby hummer was a moth. Wow! Exact match to the picture. Kind of a cool insect.
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