Yesterday, March 9th was my first time trying my hand at “Hummingbird photography.” It’s something that friends of mine that live just outside Courtenay and I have been wanting to try for a while. 

A little bit about Anna’s Hummingbird

The noisy, adaptive, and highly visible Anna’s Hummingbird has become a common sight and sound in the southwest corner of British Columbia. Since the 1930’s it has expanded north and east from a range that was previously restricted to coastal California, likely assisted by an increase in non-native flowering plants and sugar-water feeders. It arrived in British Columbia in the 1940’s but breeding has only been known here since 1986. It is one of British Columbia’s earliest breeding birds, starting to nest-build in mid-winter. Females can quickly re-nest, some females initiating second nests while young are still in the first nests, and sometimes taking and reusing nesting material from occupied nests. One female has been recorded making four consecutive overlapping nests in one season.

The Anna’s Hummingbird is a resident in the southwest of the province, but may make local movements. Since the publication of “The Birds of British Columbia”, the breeding range of the species has expanded in coastal British Columbia to include the entire lower Fraser Valley, the southern Gulf Islands and southern and eastern Vancouver Island, with occasional records during the breeding season north to the mouth of the Stikine River.