Ruby-throated Hummingbird Print - At Fuchsia

Archilochus colubris at a fuchsia bloom, the gorget catching light. Wings reduced to a soft haze on either side of the body. That iridescent red throat burning against the drop of crimson petals. The Audubon-style palette gives it a warm cream ground, deep botanical greens, and a bird rendered with the patience the old natural-history folios reserved for the smallest and fastest subjects.

The Ruby-throated Hummingbird is the only hummingbird that breeds widely in eastern North America. The male’s gorget is not pigment. It is structural colour, microscopic platelets in the feather barbs that interfere with light to produce the red. Tilt the angle 30 degrees and the gorget goes flat black. The plate catches the moment when the light is right.

This bird weighs 3 grams. Less than a US nickel. In late August each year it roughly doubles its body weight in fat, then crosses the Gulf of Mexico in a single non-stop flight of 18 to 22 hours, 800 kilometres of open water, to reach its Central American wintering grounds. The birds that arrive on the Texas coast in spring can weigh as little as 3 grams again, having burned through everything they carried. Then they fly another two or three thousand kilometres north to reach your garden.

The wings beat at approximately 53 times per second. The figure-eight motion produces lift on both the upstroke and downstroke. The hovering is not rest. It is precision work.

This plate holds it still. A fine-art study in the tradition of Audubon, for a wall that deserves something small and remarkable.

Full field guide: /species/ruby-throated-hummingbird/

Printed on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm.