Growing Up

​     It was about the hottest day we'd had through summer, but was mid-migration for the hummingbirds. The fighting and chasing was frantic throughout the garden. One migrant showed up and gave me a few good opportunities to capture his advanced maturity. His throat was evident of a male, but more so than we usually see from any of the young before they head south. Sometimes we get a young male with a freckle or one dark feather that reflects one spot of red, but this one had a full throat of incoming dark feathers. By the time he reaches the gardens of my friends in the south he'll have a patchy red throat, and by next Spring he'll be hard to separate from all the other males dressed with a full red gorget.
​     He chased in the hot temperatures and then sat and panted like a dog. Here he sits with his mouth open, not because he was angry at another bird, but desperately tried to cool himself off before joining into the chase again. 
Juvenile male Ruby-throat hummingbird. N.E. of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Mid-August 2018

---