{"id":101226,"date":"2021-08-11T05:53:12","date_gmt":"2021-08-11T11:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=101226"},"modified":"2021-08-11T12:23:01","modified_gmt":"2021-08-11T18:23:01","slug":"do-hummingbirds-cast-pellets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/11\/do-hummingbirds-cast-pellets\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Hummingbirds Cast Pellets?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning I may have photographed a hummingbird casting tiny pellets. I’d never heard of such a thing in hummers.<\/p>\n

Pellet casting in birds is more common than most folks think. Owls are well known for it but most raptors and many arthropod-eating songbirds and shorebirds also form and cast pellets as a means of discarding indigestible materials (insect exoskeletons for example) without them having to pass through the entire digestive tract. The indigestibles are simply formed into a compact pellet and expelled through the mouth. I’ve photographed a wide variety of bird species casting pellets over the years.<\/p>\n

But I’d never heard of hummingbirds casting pellets. The diet of most hummers is primarily nectar but they also need protein which they get by eating a relatively small amount of tiny insects and spiders which of course have chitinous, indigestible exoskeletons. Due to the high water content of nectar, hummer waste is composed mostly of a clear, watery liquid but dark fragments of arthropod exoskeletons can often be seen in their watery ‘urine’.<\/p>\n

I wondered if hummers are known to cast pellets orally instead of passing indigestibles through their digestive tract so I tried to research the subject but came up empty. Nowhere online can I find any reference to hummers casting pellets. Even Cornell’s exhaustive Birds of the World doesn’t mention it in the three hummingbird species I researched – they only mention “insect cuticle” passing out in their watery wastes.<\/p>\n

So last night while I was reviewing photos taken yesterday morning I was more than a little surprised when I found photos that appear to show a hummingbird casting tiny pellets.<\/p>\n

The following photos are presented in the order they were taken. Keep in mind that with my camera there’s only 1\/10th of a second between photos in a burst.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It was our old friend the feisty young Rufous Hummingbird who had just landed on his favorite amaranth perch in my garden. Soon after he landed he began to repeatedly stick his tongue out, a very common practice among hummingbirds. Common or not I like to photograph their unique tongues so I fired off a quick burst, expecting to capture nothing more than his tongue action.<\/p>\n

I got more than I bargained for.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After sticking his tongue out several times he violently shook his head, as if there was something stuck to his head that he was trying to get rid of. I’ve seen this kind of head shaking many times from birds trying to expel pellets from their mouths.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A closer look at the same photo gives us a better look at what appears<\/em> to be a dark mass of some kind at the tip of his lower mandible. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Then he opened and closed his bill.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As he stuck out his tongue again a tiny dark mass suddenly appeared in his bill near his mouth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The process of sticking his tongue out even further appeared to draw the dark mass to the tip of his bill.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Once it was at the tip of his bill he clamped down on it to hold it in place which allowed him to retract his tongue back into a more normal position.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But then he stuck his tongue out again with the dark mass still near the tip of his bill.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/10th of a second later the mass was gone and his bill was closed.<\/p>\n

I never did capture any of the dark bits being dropped or flying through the air but that doesn’t surprise me much. Hummers are so incredibly quick that 1\/10th of a second is almost an eternity to them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So what do you think? Was this a pellet (or pellets) being expelled? I’m not claiming for certain that it was but I can think of no other logical explanation.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Note: <\/em><\/p>\n

Within minutes of me publishing this post my good friend Jim DeWitt found this reference to hummingbirds forming pellets in an online technical paper. It mentions pellets being formed internally but it doesn’t say they’re expelled orally. <\/em>Jim is a retired attorney so he’s had lots of practice doing research but I’m still impressed.\u00a0 I sure couldn’t find anything.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sorry about the formatting problems.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Formation of pellets. I have twice found pellets (consisting of <\/em>
\nchitin) in the stomachs of hummingbirds. Fine pieces of chitin are <\/em>
\nground by ordinary stomach action and excreted through the intestine, <\/em>
\nas analysis of feces shows. But pieces of chitin too large and hard for <\/em>
\ndigestion are apparently regurgitated in the form of pellets. I found <\/em>
\nboth pellets in March, when the drought was most severe and the <\/em>
\nspecies I encountered were feeding entirely on animal prey. A specimen <\/em>
\nof the Red-billed Azure-crown had in its stomach a round pellet, 4 mm. <\/em>
\nin diameter, made up entirely of coarse pieces of chitin pressed tightly <\/em>
\ntogether. The other pellet, found in a specimen of the Pine Star-throat, <\/em>
\nwas the same size, but rather more oval in shape. Wetmore ( 1916: 73) <\/em>
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 says that Green Mangos (Anthracothorax Gridis) \u201cundoubtedly re\u0002gurgitate<\/em>waste matter, in the form of pellets, from which the nutriment<\/em>has been digested. Several of these, 2 millimeters long by 1 wide, ready <\/em>
\nto be expelled, were found on opening the stomachs, and in each case <\/em>
\nconsisted of a firmly compressed pellet containing chitinous fragments <\/em>
\nof insects and spiders.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning I may have photographed a hummingbird casting tiny pellets. I’d never heard of such a thing in hummers.<\/p>\n

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