Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Archilochus colubris
Ruby-throated Hummingbird · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 24 August 2025
A Ruby-throated Hummingbird at cardinal flower in the August border, the only hummingbird that breeds east of the Mississippi and a summer visitor to Brooklyn from Central America. It is about to leave: by mid-September the Ruby-throats have gone, and many fly the Gulf of Mexico in a single night.
No red throat visible, so a female, or a young male still to come into his gorget. Cardinal flower is a native lobelia whose deep red tube is built almost exclusively around this one pollinator. Bees generally can't manage the flower's shape or reach its nectar; hummingbirds are the main reason it gets pollinated at all.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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