I worked very hard to see my lifer Giant Hummingbirds in Ecuador some years ago, or at least to see them well. It is not that they are particularly rare or difficult to find within their range, it was just not the easiest thing to get close to one while I was perched on the edge of a cliff and the birds were casually moving in and out of view, too far for me to sketch or observe closely. I got some poor record shots on that visit, and that was about it. They are inordinately cool birds, though, an unusual and even unique species amongst hummingbirds, and this year I finally had a chance to study them at length.
They are, as one might surmise, huge. Flying slowly, and almost, well, floppily, amongst tree tops and flowers, they could conceivably be mistaken for a bird from an entirely different family, but what family would fit that flight style and size? They can be befuddling the first time you see one, but once you know that they even exist, they are pretty unmistakable in the field.
Giant Hummingbirds measure about 9” in total length (21-23cm). To put that into perspective, that is about twice as long as an American Goldfinch. The European Goldfinch, which is slightly larger than the American (and also not closely related, but it will suffice for comparison), is still about 3 1/2” (9 cm) shorter than a Giant Hummingbird. It seems absurd.
They are also very drab, often described as “brown” or even “dull” in their species accounts. For most hummingbirds, this is certainly not the description one thinks of first. The family Trochilidae is known for its exuberance of colors as well as flamboyance of feathering, and Giant Hummingbirds display neither of those things. You might wonder why, as an artist intoxicated by hue and chroma, I am transfixed by this species, and have chosen to illustrate and write about it instead of other, showier hummingbirds. The answer is twofold.
Firstly, as a birder, there is the insanity of this year’s announcement that Giant Hummingbirds are not one species, but two. Ongoing research and published studies have shown that one of the two species is migratory, the other sedentary. Southern Giant Hummingbirds journey the longest recorded yearly distance of any hummingbird: 5200 miles (8369 kilometers)! They travel from their breeding grounds at lower elevations up to 13,000 feet (4572 meters) for the winter. There, in the high elevations, the southern species quietly mixes with the sedentary northern species, living amongst them for the season.
The two species are nearly identical to the eye, with the sedentary northern Giant Hummingbirds being slightly larger and therefore the true largest hummingbird in the world. Other morphological differences are surprising, however: the northern not only have greater lung capacity, they have different blood composition than the southern species! This makes sense, as northern Giant Hummingbirds spend their entire lives at altitudes that can be as high as 15,000 feet (4800 meters). As many tourists know, our lungs can struggle to function at a basic level at those heights! So it all makes sense, but how on earth did we not know that these two species, separated from each other for millions of years, even existed?
On to the second, more modest reason for my fascination. I have just returned from leading a trip to the Peruvian Andes, where we had chances to observe Giant Hummingbirds at length. Given our locations and the time of year, these were the northern Giant Hummingbirds. My own small epiphany, while sketching and photographing these unassuming giants, was that their plumage is primarily iridescent. It is subtle (subtle surprises are always the best), but these birds are neither dull nor generically brown. Given good views and changing light, all of the colors of the rainbow are there.
Citations and for more information:
Extreme elevational migration spurred cryptic speciation in giant hummingbirds
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313599121
World’s largest hummingbird is actually two species
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/05/worlds-largest-hummingbird-actually-two-species
Scientists Discover World’s Largest Hummingbird Hiding in Plain Sight
https://www.audubon.org/magazine/scientists-discover-worlds-largest-hummingbird-hidingplain-
sight
Velásquez-Noriega, P., M. J. S. Mallea, F. Medrano, I. Heynen, and P. Pyle (2023). Giant Hummingbird (Patagona gigas), version 3.0. In Birds of the World (F. Medrano and B. K. Keeney, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/
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