Rufous Hummingbird

This is the feistiest hummingbird in North America. The brilliant orange male and the green-and-orange female Rufus Hummingbird are relentless attackers at flowers and feeders, going after (if not always defeating) even the large hummingbirds of the Southwest, which can be double their weight.

Rufus Hummingbirds are wide-ranging, and breed farther north than any other hummingbird. Look for them in spring in California, summer in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, and fall in the Rocky Mountains as they make their annual clockwise circuit of the West and the longest migratory journeys of any bird in the world

Photographed at Desert Museum, Tucson, AZ