The Tale of a Hummingbird Tail

By Dan Weisz

Male Broad-billed Hummingbird, all photos by Dan Weisz

Male Broad-billed Hummingbirds are arguably the most beautiful hummingbirds in the United States. According to Cornell’s All About Birds site, with proper lighting, their "vivid, red bill, emerald body, and glittering sapphire throat sets it apart from other US hummingbirds."

We were recently watching the hummingbirds on the back porch, and one in particular continued to perch where we could easily see it.

That day, it spent quite a bit of time preening. This feather maintenance helps to clean the feathers as well as to realign them for flight performance. Looking closely, you can see the one little feather the hummingbird was working on at that moment. As we watched him, we realized that this Broad-billed Hummingbird was missing all of its tail feathers!

This healthy looking bird seemed to be in great shape. It was active and very aggressive in protecting two of the feeders on the back porch. Its flight did not look impacted by the missing feathers.

Hummingbirds have ten tail feathers. During a molt, they usually lose their tail feathers in pairs, beginning with the inner pairs. After those feathers begin growing back the bird may molt the next pair, and so on. There should always be feathers in place.

It's possible this bird lost all of its tail feathers in a fight with another aggressive hummingbird or to a predator. In any case, this is not a very common occurrence.

Was it going to regrow its tail feathers? I became a bit obsessed with this bird, looking for it daily. It was easy to spot, not due to its missing tail, but to its regular habit of guarding those two feeders and then using several different perches repeatedly.

I was hoping the bird would remain in the yard and not migrate or move elsewhere. As long as the bird continued to stay around, I had a chance to learn whether the feathers would regrow or if perhaps the feather follicles were damaged preventing new feathers from growing.

The Broad-billed Hummingbird certainly appeared aware of my presence. Here, he seems to be saying "Watch me!" So I did, for almost two weeks. At times, it seemed as if it understood my interest. Still, it never revealed its secret. How did he lose those feathers and would they ever grow back?

One day, long after I first noticed it preening, I was surprised to see something. There were definitely tail feathers growing in! They seemed to be growing in all at once rather than the normal one pair at a time.

The Broad-bill continued to be very physically active, flying rapidly and aggressively towards any other hummingbird that came near "its" two feeders. Because it was so aggressive, it never seemed to use perches tucked deeply into vegetation. It most often seemed to use perches that were out in the open, with clear attack paths towards the feeders.

Two days later, the feathers seemed to be growing in nicely.

After a week, the feathers almost reached the tip of the Broad-bill's wings.

The next day they had reached the tip of the wings.

Two days later, the hummingbird looked almost normal. My final shot in this series shows the tail feathers beginning to stretch beyond its wing tips. I felt it would be tough to continue to differentiate this fellow from other hummingbirds, so I stopped looking for it.

I felt good knowing that its tail feathers did grow back, no matter the cause of them all being gone at once. It was great to see a bird survive even when it was presented with a challenging situation!

Dan Weisz is a native Tucsonan and retired educator who enjoys birding, being in nature, and taking photographs.