Ruby-throated Hummingbird, hovering
Archilochus colubris
Ruby-throated Hummingbird · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 19 August 2026
A female or immature Ruby-throated Hummingbird approaching a spike of cardinal flower head-on in the August border, tail fanned wide. It is the only hummingbird that breeds east of the Mississippi, a summer visitor to Brooklyn from Central America, and cardinal flower in August is what it lives on before the flight south.
The tail is fanned for stability rather than display; in a hover the tail is a rudder, and it opens and closes constantly as the bird corrects its position. Cardinal flower is built for this visitor: the long red tubes hold nectar out of reach of most insects and offer nothing to land on, so it is pollinated almost entirely by hummingbirds, which pick up pollen on the forehead as they feed. The wings are beating around fifty times a second.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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