Orange County Register

Hummingbirds: adorable, right?

Wrong, says the producer of a new film about the tiny, hovering creatures — at least if you’re another hummingbird.

Naturalist Tom Kaminski’s new film, being shown Saturday in Mission Viejo, does of course include a wealth of stunning footage of, yes, adorable hummingbirds. But it also exposes the birds’ dark side: their fights over territory, complete with “rules of engagement,” their petty jealousies, their attacks on other animals — “self-centered and anti-social,” Kaminski calls them.

“They will, like other birds, mob predators,” he said. “That is the only time you see hummingbirds cooperate about anything.”

Featherweight fights are common, he said.

“You see them drill their bills into the heads of other hummingbirds, into their necks, or actually landing on the backs of other hummingbirds to pull it off the feeder,” he said.

Kaminski’s film also details how hummingbirds hover — with rapid-fire, figure-8 wingbeats — and explodes a few hummingbird myths: for instance, that they are single-mindedly focused on finding red flowers. In reality, he said, abundance and taste of nectar come before color on the hummingbird priority list.

The 57-minute film, “Hummingbirds: Beauty and the Beast,” shows all 16 U.S. species, and 57 hummingbird species in all, plus 17 species of other birds.

Kaminski will host hourly showings of the film from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 21, at Wild Birds Unlimited, 24481 Alicia Parkway, Mission Viejo, and will answer questions in between.

DVDs of the film also are available on Amazon.com and the Avian Video Center, he said.

(Images from film of Anna’s hummingbird head and of the same species feeding on flower courtesy, Tom Kaminski.)

View excerpt on Youtube:

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