Every have one of those to-dos that stares you in the face and it just hangs around and around and around? In my latest situation it was an item on my read list. It has been there since 2019, finally got it as gift this last Christmas and then dragged it on two long trips out west and managed to get through maybe 2 chapters at best. Got back, put it on my nightstand, said goodnight to it every night and promised to turn the pages ….the next night. Even more embarrassing it was about building good habits and breaking bad one. The book – Atomic Habits by James Clear (link here). In my defense, I was keeping up on his thought provoking emails in the midst of this (think he stopped sending those or I got dropped somehow through 2025). My summary, probably would have been more useful while I was still in the grind as my “habits” have shifted a bit and maybe honing them isn’t as critical. I do like the core principles, Make it Obvious, Make it Attractive, Make it Easy and Make it Satisfying, however, my big takeaway was his take on boredom . “Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It’s the ability to keep going when work isn’t exciting that makes the difference. Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way“. That rang absolutely true with me as I always tell people my superpower is the ability to grind in work (formerly) and sport (ultras). Overall, not a bad read, although, I would recommend first consuming my favorite book – Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter (link here) or Do Hard Things by Steve Magness (link here). Those two offerings pretty much summarize my long held outlook on life.
Steve focuses on developing mental toughness and Michael challenges you to participate in activities you have a 50% chance of absolute failure even with focused training (misogi)…and now you know why I do the things I do ha. Why bring all this up..well, because I am about to do something in this post that is hard, which I should make more of a habit of and yes, there is high probability of failure. Today we are taking on the female Hummingbirds!
Before digging into this, I found myself quoting Theron from 300: “This will not be over quickly, you will not enjoy this, you suck at female Hummers“…or something like that. Hit the jump to see the fruits of my misery ha.
For starters, I am just going to focus on the Hummingbirds I featured in the Arizona Hummingbird series from last month. I felt bad about glossing over the females of those species because they are “difficult”. To Clear’s credit, let’s break that bad habit and take this challenge head on starting with the female Violet-Crowned Hummingbird above {imagine that being said while displaying my well-honed uber-confident expression just daring anyone to counter}. You may be asking yourself “Why is he so confident” after noting my previous hesitation in this realm. Answer, because I used my well-honed confident expression and (as I always tell my staff) if you ID with authority and don’t blink it is likely no one will counter you in the field hehehehe. Truth is the female and males Violet-Crowned Hummingbirds look alike so unless you have inside information, it would be nearly impossible to argue against.
Now that one is admittedly an easy one to kick off with so I’ll give you a bonus look at a situation where there is a difference and that is in the immatures.
Immature Violet-Crowned Hummingbirds have a brown head with limited to no coloring on the crown or back of the neck. They still have fairly clean and white bellies and the black-tipped orange bill as you can see in these two shots.
That covers the easy one, the rest is pure on misogi and all feedback in the comments section is encouraged – just be sure and include your reasoning so we can all learn together. Okay, this next one has a fairly clean throat relative to its male counterpart. Harder to see from this shot, but also very clean and whitish through the belly and the bill is solid black. To me, the key indicator is the white coloring on the tips of the tail feathers.
When expanded, the outer three feathers on each side of the tail will have large white spots on them – in the shot above, they are folded in, but you can make out the overall whiteness on the inner tail as a whole. Those indicators convey to me it is a female Black-Chinned Hummingbird.
Now let’s take a look at the next specimen. Being a relative characteristic, I will tell you that this is a very large bodied Hummingbird which practically gives it away on its own. Also hard to tell in this shot (apologies), but the bill is long, straight and black. Green coloring above, with a grey wash through the chest/belly.
In this particular case, the small white streak behind the eye seals the deal for me that this is likely a female Rivoli’s Hummingbird. See this specimen next to any other Hummingbirds featured in the Arizona collection and you will probably call it pretty quickly. Assuming you can see the difficulty if you don’t have that relative characteristic.
Okay, next up is a rather slender entry in the female Hummingbird category. You will see that its bill contains some orange coloring and compared to the Violet-Crowned, definitely a dingy underfeathering. This one can get a bit tricky, but there is one field marking that can help tremendously.
See that larger white line behind the eye that curves downward. Based on my research, this puts this particular female specimen in the Broad-Billed Hummingbird species. It also has a notched tail, but she needs to be willing to show that to you.
This is the point where this Hummer ID misogi has the greatest chance of failure. Part of that is due to not having a good set of pictures of the female Anna’s from the Arizona trip to refer to and the rest of the concern is this female is just plain hard to identify. I am cheating a bit here as I am not including the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird in this list because I didn’t feature that species in my Hummingbird series. Fortunately, their ranges do not overlap much (definitely not in Arizona, but they do get close in west Texas). They are very similar in my opinion.
Anna’s females will usually have a small reddish spot on their throat (see darker spot above), a pale/whitish line over the eye and an all black bill. They are also pretty plump…sorry, did not mean to offend, “full figured” versus say the svelte Black-Chinned females. Word has it the Black-Chins spend their free time in Peloton spin classes and splurge for Sono Bello sculpting sessions. I will make a point to get more pictures of the Anna’s females next time I get an opportunity to see them in the field. Oh, note, Cornell continues to drive me bat-shit crazy. You can compare a Ruby-Throated to an Anna’s, but you cannot compare an Anna’s to a Ruby-Throated on their website – this absolutely annoying.
Thought I would also give you my cheat sheet I created during my research in case it provides you some help in the field
Broad-Billed
Slender, Dingy Underparts, White Line Curves Down Behind Eye
Anna’s
Metallic Green Above, Grayish Below, Reddish Spotting on Throat, Black Bill, Pale Line Over Eye
Black-Chinned
Dull Metallic Green, Whitish Throat and Underparts, White Tips on Outer Tail Feathers
Rivoli’s
Large, Long Straight Bill, Green Above, Grayish Below, Small White Streak Behind Eye, Dark Bill
Violet Crowned
Males and Females Same, Straight Orange Black Tipped Bill, Immatures: Brown Head with Limited Coloring on Crown/Hindneck
Comparisons:
Anna’s have a shorter bill and plumper than Black-Chinned
Black-Chinned have a clearer throat than Anna’s
Black-Chinned are smaller with a darker bill compared to orange bill of Violet-Crowned
Rivoli’s larger than all these other specimens
Rivoli’s have dingy underparts compared to Violet-Crowned
I have to say it feels good to have made this attempt at the female Hummers. I wish I could give you more of a definitive comparisons or a tried and true breakdown to help you in the field, unfortunately, their similarities can outweigh their differences. Good luck in the field and as stated earlier, feedback is absolutely welcome.
Now I will leave you with a shot of our youngest – Linda is shooting a dog show this weekend and needed to get her settings dialed in. Ruger quickly volunteered – what a ham!!
Wildlife Intrigued 
I enjoyed this one. We don’t get hummingbirds here in Belgium, so I’ll happily leave the identification challenge to you. It looks like female hummingbirds can be surprisingly difficult to tell apart, which makes your “misogi” a pretty good challenge. Good luck with the next round!
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Glad to hear Buschcrafter! The females are definitely a hard lot to discern, my saving grace is they tend to interact with the males of their own species so I tend to watch and let the females give it away by what males they are hanging with. Doesn’t always work, but a nice crutch when you need some help – I tend to take reference pictures of the two together that are usually not good enough to publish, but a handy assist when looking at the series. It is a shame you do not get them where you live, they are truly beautiful. As a note, my former manager was from Gosselies – my company has a plant there.
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Well, that is indeed a clever way of doing it. I think I’ll have to try that with duck species. We do have quite a few of those here, and they can be surprisingly complicated to tell apart as well. I suppose that may have something to do with my ageing brain! 🙂
Belgium may be a very small country, but it is quite famous – even Trump talks about us! 🙂 Anyway, Gosselies is in the French-speaking part of Belgium, in Wallonia. It’s only about 85–100 km from where I live, depending on how you measure it, although in Belgium that can still be quite a journey because we are a small but very densely populated country.
That dense population does have its disadvantages for nature, and wildlife habitat is rather limited here. Things are changing, though. We have wolves back in Flanders, and lynx are making a comeback in the Ardennes. And with all the countries around us occasionally going up in flames, everything eventually seems to end up here anyway! 🙂
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We are all aging (father used to tell me that was a good thing as the alternative was not a good thing) so any trick can be a big help on the ID front. I never got a chance to visit our Belgium facility, being in IT I could do almost everything I needed to address any issues they had from my desk here in the States although I would have enjoyed their cafeteria as believe that was the only facility (besides maybe our ones in France) that had wine in their cafeteria. My boss used to give me tidbits about the region from time to time and eventually was relocated here until his untimely passing – not sure if it was indicative of the European region or not, but he could drink me under the table ha. He brought over one of his supervisors with him – can’t remember what area she was from, but she spoke Flemish so that might help narrow it down a bit. Glad to hear the wildlife is making it back into your area – we have wolves in the States (a few of them), but I have always wanted to see a Lynx in the wild. We are having our own fire related issues here in the States (way too many started by malicious humans) and it will be interesting to see the wildlife response to that. Take care and I always enjoy your own in depth coverage of the photography world.
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Thanks, and I agree about the wildlife. Seeing a lynx in the wild would be quite something. They are present in parts of Europe, but actually encountering one is a very different matter. Wolves are becoming more common here too, although that brings its own share of controversy.
The fires are another matter altogether. Deliberately started fires are a problem here as well, although fortunately probably not on the same scale as what you are experiencing in parts of the US. It will be interesting, and rather sad, to see how wildlife responds to those areas over time. Nature can be remarkably resilient, but recovery is not always as straightforward as we might hope.
And thanks for the kind words about my photography articles. I enjoy digging into these subjects, especially when there is a bit more to them than simply comparing specifications.
Have a great weekend !
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I am hopeful for the wildlife recovery. On the positive side to fire it tends to rejuvenate that land – absolutely amazing to see the forest of evergreens that emerge after the heat opens up all the pine cones and drops into the newly fertile (charred) grounds. This tends to bring back the dependent wildlife, but there is definitely no sure thing about uncontrolled burns. Ironically, there are birds that flourish and seek out recently burned areas so they to be a good signal that things are on the mend. You definitely have a knack for digging in to the technical landscape!! Lately I have been getting really frustrated with recent updates to tools like Photoshop and Lightroom which I use all the time in my process flow. More of an indicator of aging as I used to love that stuff, now I tend to get frustrated if I have to take time to figure out what an update did to my favorite toolset.
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I added a new note to my iPhone notebook titled Hummingbirds Brian’s ID. I will use this to assist me with my feather friends at my sugar bar.
Yesterday I noted “Tiny female or juvenile at feeder 8 AM. It’s so tiny that it can’t place its feet on the rim. Loved the sugar bar then happily flew away for an abundance of insects.” That’s as close as I could get with my ID, Brian. I certainly have no disagreements with your Arizona female descriptions. Plump versus full-figured I think are appropriate even though I use the word round. Laughing about those who attend spin class and sculpting session on a regular basis! Ah, I did notice the extra at the sugar bar with glee.
Only suggestion I have is the next Amazon box must include a small light weight crown for Rugger and a fitted size crown for Linda!
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Great to hear, hopefully that reference will help you out on future sightings – I’ll continue to evolve it as I (and the Intrigued staff) get more knowledgeable on the subject, but the best I have to go on at the moment. You should see the hate male I got from the “round” female Hummingbird contingency – they are a fickle bunch ha. I can’t imagine the size of Ruger’s head if we got him a crown – he is already gloating around the dog club showing everyone his latest placement ribbon with his nose pointed up in the air and cocky Poodle prance. It really is embarrassing!
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I wonder how many habitual help books for breaking bad habits sit on nightstands? I once knew a nun who had a bad habit. Then there’s the Chick Habit, https://youtu.be/9IRFFLDU7Mc, and your half-assed, or was it a 50% chance of absolute failure?, hot chick hummingbird habit. You went beyond 50% and got a beautiful set of photos. You could get great hummer photos with one lens tied behind your back!
Ruger is quite the model. You should put him on a fashion runway wearing angel wings.
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You made me laugh – I know a LOT of nuns with bad habits!! The Chick Habits remind me of a cross between the old Batman series them and the Monsters – why is every upright bass player look like they are constipated? I like to say I give it my all, so I’ll go with the 50% chance of absolute failure…a mental picture that keeps playing in my head as I prepare for the October ultra although with being out over a year now, my chance of failure is probably pushing up into the 65% range – luckily Hummer IDing doesn’t require me to hydrate! As I responded to TD, we don’t need to make Ruger’s head any bigger than it already is – put wings on him and he’ll be walking on clouds…literally. As always, thanks for dropping in and giving me a good chuckle.
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Just as long as you finish, that will be good. I’m happy you got a laugh out of my comment. Bass vios are vile, so it’s no wonder the players look constipated.
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I think that list of ID features is a great idea. And Ruger is so cute.
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The ID aid still needs some refinement, but definitely a good start for helping us out in the field – we like to say we are always learning hear at Intrigued. Ruger says thank you for the kind words – although now he is continually walking around going “Anneli thinks I’m cute!” – this dog’s ego is through the roof I tell ya’ ha.
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LOL. Thanks.
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This is a great post, wonderful photos and extremely helpful tips on IDing the little ladies. I doubt that I will come anywhere close… but I swear I will try.
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Glad to help Sam – as you know, this ID business can be incredibly frustrating. We will continue to refine it as we learn more, but a good start – of course, the best approach is to always try to get some reference shots of them hanging out with their male counterparts (our strategy when it comes to waterfowl as well). Good luck on your Arizona processing, looking forward to the related posts.
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So cute we should save them. Well shared 💐
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Thank you Priti, they are a truly wonderful species and always a joy to watch them interacting with their friends at the feeder. Take care and appreciate you dropping in.
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☺️
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Your female hummingbird gallery and ID is impressive, Brian. If the female is not with the same-species male, it is nearly impossible to ID them in real life because of their speed. It is helpful with the photos because the small, nuanced markings are still. Lovely photos, too, my friend.
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Thank you Jet, appreciate the kind words. Absolutely agree with you on how hard it is to get these speedsters ID’d in the field. I look at all my fellow birders with just binoculars in the field and wonder how they do it without the added benefit of having “still” shots to compare and contrast with the reference models. Hope all is well out your way, we had a blast exploring out west in Oregon and Washington, but ended up not having time to do much in the northern California area even though I had a list of all the great spaces you have introduced me to over the years – fortunately, there are always future trips planned! Take care and thanks for coming by!
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I almost quit reading when I encountered the sentence “Today we are taking on the female …” as I figured there would be big trouble ahead. I had taken a sip of coffee about that time and turned away to put the mug down. Fortunately, I saw that last word and sighed with relief.
A terrific essay on perserverance and great tips on hummer i.d.
That last image may not be a hummer, but as my Uncle George would have said: “That’s a Humdinger!”. Good luck to Ruger and Linda and all seekers of hummers.
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hahahaha, so true, but glad you stuck with us! I am sure Linda was having the same thoughts while I was preparing to write this post. Glad you enjoyed the views and tips Wally. Not complete by any means, but a good start as an aid for the field .. or digital darkroom. I do not dread going through the Hummingbird series nearly as much as I used to now. Sounds like your uncle and my dad (also named George) would have gotten along well. Ruger and Linda have a show this weekend so fingers crossed that goes well – Linda recently blew her knee and will likely need some work done on it so going to be a tougher go for her – Ruger is already advertising for a replacement handler and worried he is going to be impacted by the “gimp”. With all the Haunted Trail work I am falling behind on reading everyone’s posts – hope all is going well for you and Gini and the recovery process is proceeding as expected.
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