Ruby-throated Hummingbird at Cardinal Flower
Archilochus colubris
Ruby-throated Hummingbird · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 26 July 2026
A Ruby-throated Hummingbird at Cardinal Flower in the July border, the only hummingbird that breeds east of the Mississippi and a summer visitor to Brooklyn from Central America. Cardinal Flower is a native of wet ground and stream edges across the East, and the two have shaped each other.
No red throat patch on this one, which makes it a female or an immature bird. Cardinal Flower is about as specialised for hummingbird pollination as an eastern wildflower gets: a long, narrow, brilliant red tube shaped to keep out short-tongued insects and reward exactly the bird pictured, which picks up pollen on its forehead as it feeds.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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