Ruby-throated Hummingbird Print - At Trumpet Vine

A blur of wings, held still. The Ruby-throated Hummingbird hovers at the trumpet vine, gorget catching the light - one angle and it blazes ruby-red, tilt it thirty degrees and it goes flat black. The plate catches that exact in-between moment, the throat luminous against the warm cream of the Audubon-style ground, the deep tubular blooms framing a bird smaller than most of the flowers it is drinking from.

Archilochus colubris weighs about three grams. Less than a US nickel. And yet each autumn one of the largest migrations in North American birdlife plays out at this scale: the bird roughly doubles its body weight in stored fat, then crosses the Gulf of Mexico in a single non-stop flight of around 800 kilometres, 18 to 22 hours over open water, burning almost all of it before landfall on the Yucatan coast. A third of the population takes the longer route around the Gulf. The other two-thirds go straight across.

Back at your garden in May, you would not guess any of this. He is at the feeder. He is chasing off every other bird in a fifty-metre radius. He weighs three grams.

Trumpet vine, with its long scarlet tubes, is among the preferred nectar sources on the breeding grounds. The plate shows why. The bird fits the flower perfectly: bill, flower depth and hover angle are a co-evolved lock and key.

In the tradition of Audubon, drawn and printed for the wall. A bird this extraordinary deserves a frame.

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

Printed on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm.