Black-chinned hummingbird (Archilochus alexandri)
As if you didn’t have enough reasons to watch the migration action at your hummingbird feeders this spring, this week’s crawly will give you one more. Meet the black-chinned hummingbird (Archilochus alexandri).
If you’ve never seen a black-chinned, that’s not surprising. In Oregon they are more common east of the Cascades. Sightings in our area are rare one-offs almost always seen during either spring or fall migration periods.
Our pictured male was seen on June 10, 2022.
If you think you see one at your feeder, grab the camera quickly, and here’s why: Even when food is scarce, migrating black-chinned will only spend one day fueling up at a feeder.
While they are a super cool bird to spot in our area, in general poor black-chinned are most well known for being perfectly average.
As you can tell by their “black-chinned” moniker and see in the photo, as hummingbirds go they aren’t very eye-catching. They do have a thin band of feathers at the base of their black chin which refract a beautiful violet, but it’s tricky to see and nowhere near as showy as the fiery gorget of the male rufous hummingbird or the dazzling fuchsia hood and gorget of the male Anna’s.
Moreover, black-chinned aren’t the largest hummingbirds, nor are they the smallest. They’re “Anna’s sized” as a reference. Their range is the Western United States (but not west of the Cascades in Oregon and Washington) down into Western Mexico where they spend their winters.
They share that range with several other hummingbird species and can easily get lost in a crowd of more colorful and feistier cousins.
Now, down in the southern areas of Arizona and New Mexico, black-chinned rule, because that’s where their largest breeding ground is and nests can be found quite close together.
Fun fact: Now and then black-chinned and Anna’s will hybridize and most of those documented hybrids are right here in Oregon. The refractive feathers on the hybrid males aren’t quite violet but aren’t quite fuchsia either and they extend up higher on the throat (gorget) than on the 100% black-chinned. Some hybrid males even get a smattering of the violet-fuchsia feathers on their crowns.
While Anna’s and black-chinned occasionally get along well enough to hybridize, as a rule Anna’s will drive black-chinned out of their territories. So even if black-chinned took a liking to our backyards, they’d have a hard time expanding their range west of the Cascades because Anna’s have a hold on the area.
Black-chinned may also hybridize with rufous hummingbirds. These hybrids have also been found in Oregon. They look like an oversized rufous female with a violet gorget.
If you’ve noticed we haven’t described the female black-chinned, well we’re sorry about that, but essentially they look like the females of several other hummingbird species. While female Anna’s and rufous can have a patch of flashy refractive throat feathers, female black-chinned always have plain non-refractive throats giving us even fewer ways to distinguish them.
That said, the females are excellent moms and industrious nest builders, here’s a description of a female black-chinned constructing her nest given by ornithologist Florence A. Merriam Bailey “The peculiar feature of the building was the quivering motion of the bird in moulding. When the material was placed she moulded the nest like a potter, twirling tremulously around against the sides, sometimes pressing so hard she ruffled up the feathers of her breast. She shaped the cup as if it were a piece of clay. To round the outside, she would sit on the rim and lean over, smoothing the sides with her bill, often with the same tremulous motion. When she wanted to turn around in the nest, she lifted herself by whirring her wings.”
So look sharp this spring and next fall, and you may spot a mysterious black-chinned stranger at your feeder or flowers.