Allen's Hummingbird

About the Allen's Hummingbird

One of the trickiest identifications in North American birding, and a genuinely notable bird anywhere in Texas. Allen's Hummingbird is the Rufous Hummingbird's coastal-California twin - a green-backed, orange-flanked Selasphorus so similar that most individuals can only be separated by the shape of their tail feathers.

That is exactly how this bird was confirmed: the narrow outer tail feathers, without the notch on the second rectrix that a Rufous shows, documented on camera and agreed on by several experienced observers. When an identification this hard can be settled from the photographs themselves, the record stands on solid ground.

Allen's breeds in a thin ribbon of coastal scrub from Oregon to Southern California, and a small number wander east every year - Texas records have grown as feeder-watchers and photographers have learned what to look for, most turning up between late summer and midwinter. Every one is worth documenting carefully, because an unphotographed green-backed Selasphorus usually has to go down as the far likelier Rufous.

Like all its family it runs on nectar and attitude, defending a feeder or a patch of flowers with complete conviction despite weighing about as much as a penny.