COMMUNITY

Hummingbird History

This is the second part of a two-part feature on hummingbirds by Ray Pawley, formerly with the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago.

Ray Pawley
For the Ruidoso News
  • Feeding hummingbirds has early roots

 

Not all hummingbirds are willing to accept feeders and the true patrons of the bottle are found in the West.

A young Broad-tailed Hummingbird and a Painted Lady Butterfly share a feeder in the fall.

For example, Ruby-throats from east of the Mississippi River seldom accept sugar water from feeders and yet, their western relative, the Broad-tail Hummingbird with its similar iridescent red bib, is an avid consumer of sugar-water.

Is there an explanation to this?  Perhaps, because Ruby-throats migrate south along the Gulf of Mexico or cut across the Gulf to Yucatan, they are traveling too far east of the Valley of Mexico. Broad-tail Hummers, on the other hand take a migratory route from the western United States directly into the Valley of Mexico. The Ruby-throats would not have experienced that extensive overlapping centuries of direct contact with humans of their close relative, the Broad-tailed Hummingbird.    

By taking care of hummers in captivity, some of us in the zoo field took advantage of close-up interactive opportunities to learn about their behavior in ways that would be impossible by trying to watch them at a distance. For example, if a hummingbird escapes from its enclosure and is loose in the service corridor, we close doors and windows and then refill and hang its sugar-water bottle just outside of its enclosure.  Within a half hour, when the bird needs to refuel, we can walk over as the bird is drinking and rehang the bottle, complete with its avian client, back in its enclosure.  We avoid wearing anything red because we do not want to unnecessarily attract birds to us while we are observing their behavior.

Hummingbirds tend to be a pugnacious group, but few species are as unafraid of people as the Black-chinned, Broad-tailed (with their “zinging” wings) or Rufous. These three species, in particular, will accept sugar-water feeders as eagerly as a crimson flower, and willingly accept the risks of associating with care-giving people as a part of the bargain. 

Are certain Colibris semi-domesticated and have they become all too abundant?  Put another way, would there be a population crash if we all stopped giving them sugar-water?

The Hummingbird is a bold, flexible, partnership-driven opportunist. Since the Age of Dinosaurs came to an end about 60 million years ago, some Colibri species adapted over the millennia along with certain flowers into a mutually dependent relationship. And it doesn’t stop there; within the last several years a few species have, as we know, adapted to getting fuel refills from sugar-water bottles that require a certain amount of close contact, indeed within touch range, of people. That they have willingly accepted and adjusted to this remarkable degree of closeness is extraordinary. In fact, when a flotilla of Black-chinned hummers arrive in the spring, they immediately hover outside of my office window announcing their return, and will continue to do so until their refueling bottle of sugar-water is hung. They obviously know where I live and how to get my attention.   

It’s my own guess, but I think these tiny birds have been patronizing our hand-outs for many centuries, far longer than the last few decades that people have been hanging out feeders for hummingbirds. It is a fact that for several hundreds, maybe as much as 2,000 years, the Azteca-Mexica people and their ancestors from the Valley of Mexico have had a tight relationship with the Colibri; the hummingbird.

Despite of the enormous culture-shock that happened when Cortez crushed the Warriors of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the feeding of hummingbirds by priests probably had been going on for centuries, particularly at sacrificial sites. Since then, thanks to caring individuals, the practice was more or less continued.

Although infamous for their sacrificial practices, the Azteca-Mexica people were extraordinary agriculturalists and their island and city, especially around the central plaza was heavily planted with flowering shrubs, plants, orchids and more. While on the one hand, their practice of sacrifice was gory, their poetic praises of, and aesthetic responses to flowers was glorious.

Long before they ruled central Mexico, they had a tradition of offering human sacrifices. Hummingbirds, which are curious and drawn to anything red in color, would be attracted to blood. The instant that one or more of these tiny birds, would hover and touch one of the blood spots on a Priest’s face or torso, the experience would be mind-bending.  Especially in such a religious ritualistic context. Quickly after, and resembling a splash of sunlight, those iridescent birds flying west toward the setting sun would have created yet a further solemn sense of wonder. 

Why would the Azteca-Mexica been eager to attract and cultivate a relationship with hummingbirds and cultivate the flowering foliage that attracts them? 

Ultimately the hummingbirds (Huitzitzilin, as they are called in Nahuatl, the language of the Azteca-Mexica), would have been elevated over the centuries and morphed into their greatest God, Huitzilopochtli, who was not only the Patron God of their city and culture, but also the God of the Sun, think iridescent Colibri, and God of Sacrifice. This helps explain why the all-powerful Huitzilopochtli of the New World’s most powerful army of warriors, would be represented not by a powerful eagle or a jaguar, but by the tiniest of the World’s birds, the Colibri: the spiritual avian messenger that is the God personified.

Have these tiny birds with their gem-like iridescence moved into our world as semi-domesticates, beginning with the ancestral Aztecs that elevated the Colibri to a powerful religious icon? By nudging the bold little hummingbird into a role of semi-dependent partnership with humans, we have fallen victim as they moved into our hearts, thankfully, without the need for sacrifice, and into our imaginations.               

Meanwhile, let’s keep those sugar-water fueling stations fully tended until the last Colibri leaves for its winter homeland.