Date May 24, 2022
Location Dornan's Pizza Pasta Company, Grand Teton National Park, WY
After successfully identifying the Broad-tailed, we were watching another hummingbird on the north side of the trail, across and downhill a bit from the Broad-tailed's favorite perch. I was stuck on the idea that this might be a Calliope because the range fit and, well, it did look rather small, even though I know this is an unreliable cue. In any case, we had plenty of opportunity to observe him because he was doing courtship flight displays.
During some iterations, he would fly high up in the air, and then, with his back turned toward us, gradually descend to a favored perch. This gave us a great view of the shiny green back feathers. Other times he would do the U-shaped display.
While on the perch, he would flare out his gorget feathers, giving us a fantastic view of the brilliant iridescent fuchsia (and solidly diagnostic) "color." The sun was behind us now, so we got all the color available. The photo above is very similar to what we were able to witness through our binoculars.
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