Rufous Hummingbird

This male Rufous Hummingbird visited our backyard feeders on 2 April 2021. This image languished in my blog queue until 19 April, when Erika and I photographed a female apparently building a nest at the Nisqually national wildlife refuge. (Rufous Hummingbirds breed in the northwestern United States north across western British Columbia to southeastern Alaska.) Females do all the nest building and only they incubate the eggs. Nests are lined with soft plant material and the outside is decorated with lichens or other plant materials attached with spider web strands (Healy and Calder 2020). The hummingbird in the last two images barely fit in her nest. Note the tail poking out of the back of the nest. In the last photo, the bird’s bill is pointed downward, apparently constructing the nest.