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The Watershed Project

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What’s in Your Watershed? | The Flashy Anna’s Hummingbird

By Andrew LaBar

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in October 2009, it has been updated and revised September of 2023. This year we are spotlighting articles featuring animals and plants from our North Richmond Urban Nature Loop. Click here to read more about all the animals featured in the stickers.

Summer is ending and Fall is soon to begin. Along with the many changes autumn brings, like pumpkin spice, spooky season, and crunchy leaves, Fall is an exciting time to gaze out your window. The sun is shining brightly and with it comes some of the Bay Area’s best weather. If you’re lucky, the beautiful Anna’s hummingbird could be putting on a lively show right in front of your eyes.

Physical Appearance

Anna’s hummingbird is the largest hummingbird on the west coast. At maturity, it reaches nine or ten centimeters in length. Anna’s body showcases marvelous bronze and green feathers, making these creatures shimmer in the sunlight. They have gray bellies and small white spots behind their eyes. Most distinctively, mature males sport a brilliant rose-red crown and throat, making them easy to distinguish from other native hummers. The females of this species are less showy than the males with plumage that display flashy bronze/green coloring and grays and browns on their wings, crown, and throat. 

Male Anna’s Hummingbird puffing up and showing off his distinctive plumage 
Credit: Doug Greenberg, “Anna’s Hummingbird ”

Range and Habitat

Humans have redefined this hummingbird’s habitat. While their original range was limited to the coasts and inland mountains of Southern and Baja California, Anna’s Hummingbird is now widespread across much of the western United States. Since the 1930’s this small bird can now be commonly seen as far north as British Colombia and as far east as Arizona and Texas. This rapid expansion in their range is attributed mainly to humans and how we have interacted with our environment. Due to the widespread suburbanization of the western US and the accompanying introduction and planting of non-native ornamental nectar-filled plants, and the popularity of urban hummingbird feeders, Anna’s hummingbird now thrives in urban and suburban yards, gardens, and parks.

Diet

Anna’s hummingbird is famous for having quite the sugar tooth. They use their slender beak to feed on the nectar found in sugary plants like red-flowering currant, hummingbird sage, California fuschia, and much more! Despite this famed love of sweet nectar, hummingbirds are also voracious predators. In fact, Anna’s hummingbirds typically eat more insects than most other hummingbird species. When they are young, baby hummingbirds cannot feed themselves, and with their high metabolism, additional sources of nutrition are required. Protein and carb-loaded caterpillars are their favorite treat as they are soft and easy to digest. But they are not picky and will eat any number of small insects or spiders that they can scoop up on the wing and pluck off branches and leaves.

Mating and Life Span

The mating season for Anna’s hummingbirds fall during the rainy season, between November and April. During this time, the female bird is busy building her soft nest, composed primarily of spider webs, plants, feathers, and hair on the inside, and bark and other hard, camouflaging bits on the outside.

Shown here feeding young in a lichen camouflaged nest 
Credit: Anna’s Hummingbird feeding young | Alexandra MacKenzie | Flickr

Once her nest is suitable, the female bird lures an interested male towards her nest and perches on the side. In an effort to impress her, the male orchestrates a series of dive bombs around the female, showing off his skill and fiery red feathers. After mating, the male bird leaves and does not help raise the young brood. Females can have two broods per mating season, incubating the eggs and nesting their offspring for about two months before they achieve independence. The average lifespan of Anna’s hummingbirds is eight and a half years.

Flighty Behavior

Anna’s hummingbirds are very territorial. Grouchy males will dive at creatures entering their territory, regardless of size. The bird may fly as high as forty meters into the air before diving at the individual is an impressive show of brilliant color. The bird also has a distinctive bird call, heard while eating, and before mating.

Look out for these colorful flighty birds in your garden this fall!

Sources:

https://www.audubon.org/news/annas-hummingbirds-are-expanding-their-range-human-help

https://www.thespruce.com/feeding-hummingbird-insects-385954

Anna's Hummingbird
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What’s in Your Watershed? | The Lovely Long-billed Curlew

By Dan Grannan

The long-billed curlew is an epic bird. Not only is it the largest shorebird in North America, it also displays one the greatest aerial shows of any avian flier. During breeding season, the curlew flies in fast loops as part of a courtship dance. This ostentatious display attracts both feathered mates and human bird-watchers alike. Named for its long, slender bill and “cur-loo” call, curlews are also called “candlestick birds” and are the namesake for San Francisco’s Candlestick Point.

Physical Appearance
Adult curlews have an elongated bill that curves downwards, a long neck and a small head, while the chicks have a much smaller and less curved bill. The females have a much longer bill than the males. Curlews’ underbelly and neck are cinnamon-colored and their crown and back are speckled with various shades of brown.

Range and Habitat
The long-billed curlews breeding range is massive. It spans from southern Canada to northern California, and also includes Utah, northern New Mexico and Texas. The curlew loves the sun and winters in California, Texas, Louisiana, and South Carolina as well as Florida, Mexico, and Central America. This range used to be much larger with massive numbers being found along the Great Plains and eastern prairies. Increased agriculture and livestock grazing has shrunk the range of the curlew.

Diet
In the summertime, curlews sample grasshoppers, beetles and crickets from the grasslands. Throw in a small amphibian from time to time and you have the ideal summer diet. During the winter months when the bird is sunning on the beach, small crustaceans, mollusks, berries and seeds are its delicacies of choice.

Child Rearing
Mama curlew lays four eggs in a grass-lined nest and incubates them for about one month. Papa curlew assists by taking turns warming and guarding the little eggs. Mama and Papa curlew use their multi-colored feather coats to camouflage and protect the nest from predators. Skilled actors, the adult birds are known to feign injury to lure potential egg-snatchers away from the nest. They also can take a more direct approach if needed, using loud vocalization and dive bombing to deter predators. Once hatched, the chicks are almost fully independent. The adults teach them to hunt grasshoppers and watch over them for up to 45 days, and then they are on their own. The average curlew life span is eight to ten years.

Conservation Status
Under the U.S. Shorebird Conservation Plan curlews are currently slated as “critically imperiled.” Habitat destruction is a major concern for the curlew. As marshlands are shrinking and prairie lands are developed or converted to farmland, the curlew is losing its potential habitat breeding grounds. With a current population size of only 123,500, monitoring and protection efforts are critical to ensure this population does not suffer the same fate of many other extinct species. You can help protect this lovely bird next month by joining The Watershed Project on International Coastal Cleanup Day to ensure that curlew habitat is free of marine debris.

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