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Before I saw the nighthawk in my previous post, I spent some time in a friend's backyard in La Junta enjoying the Black-chinned Hummingbirds coming to his feeder (and the 30 Chimney Swifts flying over plus the up to 12 Mississippi Kites doing their graceful acrobatics).
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This bright male Black-chinned Hummingbird appeared to be the top hummingbird in a few conflicts at the feeder. Black-chinned Hummingbirds are not common on the eastern plains although they have been documented nesting south of La Junta where there is a lot of pinyon-juniper habitat, their most common nesting location per surveys in the 1990's that are documented in the
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The velvet black of the male's chin, upper and side portions of it's throat provides nice contrast to metallic violet-purple on the lower part of it's throat. SeEtta
Labels: BlackChinnedHummingbird