That is One Good Looking Broad

Greetings once again from the road. By the time you read this we should be out of California and somewhere in Arizona. Picked up a number of birds during our first “official” trip to the state lighting up the 6th new state this trip on my eBird profile. Have to admit, Linda’s bribe of birding opportunities for agreeing to go out to Washington for the Poodle Nationals has materialized far better than ever imagined. I am getting a bit homesick now and looking forward to getting back…but not until we hit a few more of my favorite birding spots in Arizona. Fingers crossed the heat doesn’t chase the birds away.

This month is coming to a close and surprisingly it was spent entirely on the road. Big thanks to Brad for keeping the post quota pressure from adding additional stress to the trip. For this 6th and final post of the month, I am going to feature a member of a bird family that doesn’t get a lot of attention on this site. This has absolutely nothing to do with our fondness for this group of birds – we love them actually – but it comes with a great deal of work both during the encounter, inevitable work in the digital darkroom and then depending on a number of conditions (gender/lighting/breeding/etc), the potentially painful ID process.

To get the ball rolling, this post is going to focus on a Hummingbird that is pretty easy to identify if you can find the male. Hit the jump to learn more about this distinctive speedster.

There are many images of Hummingbirds in my backlog, all waiting patiently to get their time to shine. Unfortunately, a lot of those are of females and many more were tinned without their gorsets highlighted. Bored and looking for an activity to suck up the extra time – grab yourself a random set of singular (so you can’t rely on size relationships) female hummingbirds and pour yourself a stiff one to cut through the agonizing reference book page flipping.

Get a male in a good lights, well that can be an entirely different story.

This happens to be one Hummer that is pretty easy to identify. The bright pink bill with the black ink well dipped tip is an easy option reducer. Wait, I should preface that for encounters within the US. I am not familiar with the multitude of Hummers around the world so overlaps with those species may occur.

So, within the US, pink bill with a black/dark tip quickly gets you down to three possible Hummingbird species (males), The Buff-Bellied, White-Eared and the Broad-Billed. Now we whittle away those options.

The first check is to see if there is a white stripe extending from the back of the eye to the back of the head. The bird namers took pity on us and actually named that variety appropriately – say it with me, the White-Eared. That strip is fairly thick, so don’t confuse it with the small white “dash” at the back of the eye on our featured specimen. Survey says, this is NOT a White-Eared.

That leaves two options that Cornell doesn’t feel is close enough to allow you to compare them on their website – hooey I say, they both have muti-colored bills! Note, I did check both ways to make sure they didn’t pull their classic one way comparison option – someone at Cornell really needs to explain to me how a similar comparison in one direction is different than the same comparison the opposite direction. Sorry, I digress. Fortunately, I am very familiar with the Buff-Bellied Hummingbird from our many trips to south Texas (link here).

“Buffy” prefers golden/rufous toned featherings along with the more traditional green colorings. In addition, they have … wait for it .. buff colored bellies. This is true for both the males and female Buff-Bellied Hummers. Note, that rufous coloring is also very visible all the way out on the tail feathers. Again, a shout out to the naming bodies. Another quick look at today’s specimen shows a healthy dose of blue and green hues down the belly. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the Broad-Billed Hummingbird!

This male Hummer species is an absolute stunner, especially when the light hits them just right to show off those iridescent feathers and bright blue gorset (throat coloring). The females..not so much with their duller green backs and grey underbellies. I am holding off on those shots for a much later post giving me time to make sure I have them distinguished from several other similarly colored female Hummers.

Okay, those familiar with Hummers are probably yelling “Regions” at the screen right now. You are absolutely correct, regions go a long way in helping to distinguish these three options. Buffy prefers to hang out in south Texas and then extend up the Gulf Coast through to the Florida Panhandle. White-Eared are really a limited number south Arizona visitor preferring to spend their days in South America. The Broad-Billed is a breeding resident at the southeastern corner of Arizona and the adjacent corner of New Mexico. Sorry folks, the rest of you will need to be content with the Anna’s, (far west) Black-Chinned (west) and Ruby’s (east) that are more numerous outside those regions.

For those looking to go after this beauty, these shots were taken at three spots in Arizona. The first of these was Patagonia State Park. This place has an absolutely incredible birding tail at the end of their campground. Warning – if you have the option, I recommend you do not visit this place on a weekend as the campgrounds fills up fast with large numbers of loud kids making it difficult to listen for birds. The second spot was Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon. If you recall, this had the Arizona Woodpecker (link here) and the Hepatic Tanager (link here) and several other great birds I still need to process – go there, you will not be disappointed.

Lastly, the Paton Center for Hummingbirds. Like the other two places, this was a birding gem of a place. There are several feeders in the front providing great looks of a variety of Hummers. If you go there, be sure and take a stroll through their back trails as that added some really nice checks to the life list including the Plumbeous Vireo (link here).

All of those places should be full of Broad-Billeds during the breeding months. Make sure you take plenty of digital real estate as you will likely be hammering that shutter trying to get them in the frame – that feeder nectar is like Red Bulls to them.

While reading up on these Hummingbirds at Cornell’s site, I learned something quite interesting. They (and apparently many others in the Hummer family) do not take too kindly to “diurnal” or daylight Owls and will “mob” them. Mobbing being a term referring to the act of several birds ganging up and attacking another often predator bird. That must be incredibly annoying for Owls to be buzzed by ginormous Lite-Brite Mosquitoes. If you are curious, yes, you can play Owl sounds to artificially ignite this behavior. Ron and I have witnessed it being used on several bird walk outings. Still on the fence about that practice, but here to say it absolutely works to draw birds out of dense habitats.

As a tip, try to keep an eye on the tree branches and shrubs near the feeders and work to capture the Hummers as they stage before heading down to the feeders. I find the non-feeder shots the most pleasing if you can get them. Threw in a few of those feeder shots with some interesting compositions in this post (from the thousands I have), but for the most part the branch shots feel more natural.

Hope you enjoyed the first look at this colorful Hummingbird. Take care everyone and we will see you again next month with likely another Hummer we found during that March/April 2025 trip to southeastern Arizona.