Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Robert Howson
Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Should you ask the average person on the street what two colors they associate with hummingbirds, I suspect the overwhelming response would be red and green, even if it wasn’t around Christmas time. But hummingbirds come in a variety of colors. Besides having predominantly green bodies they also sport varying shades of purple, crimson, rose, blue, turquoise, rufous, violet, black, white, and even sparrow-like brown. While perhaps not as gaudy as some of its flashier relatives, the Brown Violet-ear adds to the fauna reaching from Guatemala, south to Bolivia. There, it breeds in the mountains at middle elevations, descending seasonally to the lowlands.

There are several hummingbirds known as violet-ears. The name being derived from the patch of violet they all share in back of the eye. This covers, or is below the ear, hence its name. These feathers are extended outward by the male during courtship flights. Both the male and the female are largely brown with rufous on the rump and a blue/green throat patch. Its large size and short, straight beak should complete the identification.

While the Brown Violet-ear, or hummingbirds in general, are unlikely to serve as mascots of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the females do display qualities idealized in Proverbs 31, which describes a wife of noble character. Female hummingbirds are solely responsible for selecting the location and the building of the nest. She alone is responsible for the incubation of the eggs and raising of the chicks. To provide food for the young, she may engage in licking up nectar 13 times per second, plus, capturing up to 2,000 insects a day. Certainly, she models the industrious behavior described in this chapter in Proverbs. It’s no wonder she is described there as being worth far more than jewels.