Before the Vendor hours at the Tucson Birding Festival yesterday we went to Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon and sat by the Hummingbird feeders for 30 minutes or so. (We also did a bit of hiking in the canyon and spotted a Montezuma Quail, a very good Southern AZ speciality bird…undoubtedly you will see that bird here soon.) The usual number of species were present at the feeders…which, in Madera Canyon is an impressive number. Two thirds of them though were Broad-billed Hummingbirds like this specimen. Brilliant!

Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. ISO 160 @ 1/250th @ f6.3. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Cropped for composition.

And for the Sunday Thought. I can not help but feel that the Broad-billed Hummingbird got shorted in the name department. I mean it is certainly as spectacular, or more spectacular than, many of the other Hummers it competes with, and most of them have names with much more character. Costa’s, Calliope, Lucifer, and Magnificent, even Anna’s conger more beauty than Broad-billed. The rare Brown-capped Starthroat which was also frequenting the Santa Rita Lodge feeders, is, in fact a drab bird compared to the Broad-billed, but you would not suspect it from a comparison of the names. I mean, look at this bird. Such green. Such blue. Such a red bill. So vivid. Okay, so the bill is a bit wider than the norm at the base, but is that any reason to ignore all its other beautiful attributes and saddle the bird with that single feature as a name? Why not the Red-billed Hummingbird? Or the Red-billed Emerald? On the Blue Flame-throat? Or even the Crimson-billed Blue Flame-throated Emerald! Though it would not make the bird any less common at Southern Arizona feeders, it would certainly give this Hummer a boost in the Hummer popularity ratings. I mean who is going to say “my favorite Hummer for beauty is the Broad-billed”  (a certainly reasonable statement for anyone who has looked closely at the bird)? But “my favorite Hummer for beauty is the Crimson-billed Blue Flame-throated Emerald”, now, that has the proper ring to it!

God only gave Adam a very few jobs, but one of them, the first of them, was naming the animals. Which is totally enough. We only give names to the things we care for, and by extension we care for the things we name. It is the way we were created,  and, I have always believed, God’s intent for us. We are to care for creation. Creatively care for all our fellow creatures. We are the namers. We are the care givers. We have the capacity to love what God has created and work for the good of all. It is a job that we are always an inch from failing at, as we forget and concentrate on what seems to us to be our own good…but it was our first job and is likely our most important.

Which is why I feel we really ought to find a better, more fitting, name for the Broad-billed Humming bird…something we can really care about. It is a place to start anyway. 🙂