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Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Big hummer surprise today!

 I had given up looking for the Costa's Hummingbird that some visitors to Johnson Ponds saw and photographed a couple of weeks ago. (See my post for Sep 9) For no reason I can think of, I decided to walk a block away to my son's place and see if he had a hummingbird feeder up and if he had any hummers. Right away I heard a hummer in back of his house. Upon investigation it appeared to be a male Anna's. With nothing else interesting to photograph I concentrated on getting a nice pic of it. When I tired of that I walked back to our house and downloaded all my photos from today, then did an ebird report, calling that hummer an Anna's.


Next, I decided to show comparisons (on Facebook group "Trans Pecos Birds...") to it and the Costa's I had here in 2018. Both had one thing in common. Sometimes the gorget feathers looked red (like Anna's) and sometimes they looked purple (like Costa's). Nothing clicked in my mind. Today's bird was mostly red, not purple. Had to be an Anna's.



That is until Kelly Bryan saw my post. He said Anna's never have the "wings" hanging down from the gorget. It's a molting Costa's. Could've knocked me over with a gorget feather!



I think it's the same 2018 bird. I've since learned that when Costa's are molting their gorget feathers look more red.  Here are a couple more photos of today's bird. Yup, definitely molting.




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