The little fellow at right is a male black-chinned hummingbird. I managed to catch him at the right angle to see the bright purple iridescent band around his neck (at most angles, it looks black). This is a very common hummingbird around here. It's slightly smaller than the other three species we see, and vastly more aggressive.
Many of the individual male black-chinned hummers have another interesting habit: they eat from our feeders without ever landing on them. You can see this behavior at left. This is the same individual shown hovering above right – but note that from this slightly different angle you can
not see the purple band. Sometimes they'll hover in the same position as at left for 45 seconds, apparently guzzling the whole time. It's avian mid-air refueling! Only very rarely do we see any of the other species exhibiting this behavior...
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