My daughter Clare Brown is doing her Master's Degree research on
migratory connectivity in Calliope Hummingbirds, and we have banded
hummingbirds all over Washington this season and last. Yesterday, at
one of Clare's sites in Winthrop, along with all the usual Calliopes,
Rufous, and Black-chinned, we banded a probable Anna's X Black-chinned
Hummingbird hybrid.

This was a very striking bird. It was a big bird (relatively speaking),
with the slender proportions of a Black-chinned, but it had a slightly
longer, deeply forked tail. It had a large and full iridescent purple
gorget, showing no black at all, and purple "eyebrows" on the sides of
the crown. Both Anna's X Black-chinned and Costa's X Black-chinned
hybrids are known to occur. Measurements of the bird were consistent
with an Anna's X Black-chinned, but would seem to rule out Costa's X
Black-chinned. The shapes of the tail feathers matched the photo in the
book "Hummingbirds of North America", by Williamson, but the gorget
color of the Winthrop bird was true purple, not the pink-red of the
photo in the book.

Anna's Hummingbirds are still very rare in Winthrop, so it would be
interesting to know where and how this pairing came about.

Rachel Lawson
Seattle
rachelwl at msn.com