By Christy Solo – ONPA 1st Place Award Winner for Best Local Column
This week’s crawly is a mix-n-match, meet the Black-chinned X Anna’s Hummingbird hybrid.
No, he doesn’t run on a combination of Gogo Juice and battery power, but he is a blend of both of his parents!
Odds are his mum was an Anna’s hummingbird (Calypte anna) and his dad a Black-chinned (Archilochus alexandri). We’ll discuss why that’s likely in a bit.
First – what’s in a name? If you’ve picked up some knowledge about binomial names along our Crawlies journey, you may have already noticed that our Black Anna’s parents have are from different genera (Calypte and Archilochus). If we step up one taxonomy level, we’ll find that they are in the same Family (Trochilidae) and this allows them to successfully hybridize.
In other words, nature can’t produce a Turducken – that can only happen in a kitchen – because turkeys, ducks and chickens are all from different bird Families.
That said, nature can – and has – produced crosses between chickens and pheasants, because they are in the same Family (Phasianidae).
Mules are a great example of a “we meant to do this” non-natural hybridization. When it comes to natural hybrids, it quite common in the bird world – versus, say, mammals. You won’t find a Liger (lion X tiger) out in the wild…for so many reasons).
At least 10% of all bird species have been known to hybridize. Within that 10% two types of birds are serial hybridizers: Ducks and hummingbirds.
Ken Kaufman – renowned bird expert, author of multiple field guides, an accomplished nature artist and the field editor for Audubon magazine – has a solid theory as to why it’s so common with ducks and hummingbirds:
With both types of bird, females of various species look a lot alike. Like a LOT. Generally either stripey or speckled brown or – in the case of hummingbirds – green. Male ducks and hummingbirds are both distinct looking and very showy.
More importantly, neither ducks nor hummingbirds form pair bonds and male ducks and hummingbirds leave a lot to be desired in the parenting department. To put it in common vernacular, they are of the “hit it and quit it” persuasion.
Females of both species do all the nest building, brooding, feeding and caretaking of their young. Meanwhile the males are out at the avian singles bar looking for their next hookup, and males of both types of birds can be quite aggressive if females don’t show any interest.
Other types of birds hybridize for other reasons, possibly a scarcity of their own species, or in the case of Bullock’s and Baltimore Orioles, they hybridize at crossover zones. Bullock’s are a western oriole species, Baltimore eastern. Where their two zones meet, there are a lot of hybrids. So many in fact at one point the hybrids were given their own species designation (that has since been undone).
As with our Black Anna hybrid, birds always present as a pretty perfect mashup of their parents and the features which pass on from either side are consistent. You can peruse pics of Black-chinned X Anna’s in the Macaulay Library and you will see each different bird looks remarkably like the others.
Hybrids present unique research opportunities for ornithologists, so much so that Birds of the World created an entire Hybrid Section in 2023. It will be quite a while before they flesh out the various entries, as for the most part hybrids are catch as catch can with few places where spotting a hybrid is a “sure thing.”
Back to Black Anna’s. So, we can deduct his mum was an Anna’s and dad a Black-chinned, but do we know anything else about him?
For example: Black-chinned hummingbirds are a rare bird in our area. Typically they migrate to and breed east of the Cascades. When one happens to meander west of the Cascades on their journey, they will only stay for a single day before moving on, even if there’s a great food source.
Anna’s on the other hand are here year-round and only migrate a very short distance, if at all.
So will a Black Anna’s hang out in our area with their Anna’s kin, or move on up and over the Cascades to hang with the Black-chinned?
Our pictured Black Anna did the typical one-day stopover, so he inherited his dad’s need for the wide-open spaces of Eastern Oregon over our riparian wonder on this side of the mountains.
Of course we also don’t know whether or not Black Anna is able to reproduce at all. Some hybrid birds can, some cannot.
We’ll just think positive thoughts for our Black Anna as he journeys on to his summer home.
