Rivoli's Hummingbird in Madera Canyon

This is a Rivoli's Hummingbird from Madera Canyon, and the file says August 2022, which is about all the file is willing to tell me. If you've been birding southeast Arizona for a while you probably knew this bird as the Magnificent Hummingbird. That's what everybody called it until 2017, when it got split into two species and the northern one went back to its old name, Rivoli's. I still slip and call it Magnificent now and then... I don't think the bird has strong feelings about it.

It's a big hummingbird, at least as hummingbirds go. A Rivoli's weighs something like twice what the Black-chinned Hummingbirds we have all over Tucson do, and it carries itself like it knows that. In the US you mostly find them up in the pine and oak country of the sky island mountains, and Madera Canyon in the Santa Ritas is one of the more dependable spots in the state to see one, which is a big reason I keep driving down there.

The color in this one is a bit of a tease. An adult male in good light has a full purple crown and a bright green throat, and the rest of him looks close to black. This bird is giving me two patches of purple on top of the head and one little flash of green at the throat, and everything else is a scaly mix of green and bronze. Part of that is just angle, since hummingbird color comes from the structure of the feathers and not pigment, so it only lights up when the light hits it right. Part of it may be that this is a younger male who hasn't finished filling in, which would go along with the speckled look on the chest and throat. I'm not going to swear to that one either way, so if you know your Rivoli's plumages better than I do, feel free to set me straight.

The pose is what sold me on the frame. He's got his head tipped down and turned toward me, with that little white spot behind the eye showing, and the look is pretty much what you'd expect from someone who got interrupted. The perch is a dry forked twig with nothing in front of the bird, which is about as good as a photographer gets, and the leaves and branch behind him went soft enough that he pops right off the background. Bill is sharp, eye is sharp, and I'll take that every time. The long dark tail hanging down past the perch also shows how much bird there is here compared to our usual hummers, and to me it makes him look a little like he's wearing a coat a size too big.