One of the birds marked as a “tipping point species” by the 2025 nationwide State of the Birds report is our local resident, the Rufous Hummingbird.
That report was compiled by more than 20 organizations, and trustworthy data from five different sorts of surveys.
This tiny, orange-sparkly bird sips flower nectar, drinks from hummer feeders and sapsucker wells, hawks for minute insects like gnats and midges and aphids and whiteflies, and has declined at least 62% since 2010, according to the Western Hummingbirds Partnership.
Their status as an “Orange Alert” tipping point species means they’ve endured widespread declines over the last few decades, and those declines are accelerating. Without much more active conservation, the Gorge’s only bright-orange hummer could just vanish.
One of the tiniest migratory birds at just 2 to 5 grams and with a four-inch wingspan, Rufous Hummingbirds all winter in Mexico. Some make one of the world’s longest migratory journeys when they fly to Alaska in the spring, arriving by April and leaving in July.
Others stop in Oregon, a few settling briefly around The Dalles to build a two-inch-wide nest of cobwebs and plant down, and hatch a couple of half-inch-long white eggs.
We could list all kinds of reasons for saving this marvelous iridescent flower-sipping speck; why we should lay off the pesticides and plant native plants and work with our local conservation districts, and fight for legislation and policy that recognizes the threat timber management and fire suppression and climate change all pose to the declining birds of our western forests...Although, good luck with that last one right now!
I could point out that birding supports 1.4 million jobs in the U.S., or that the scarlet wild columbine needs its pollinator, or that we don’t even know what kind of holes the absence of hummingbirds would tear in our local ecologies, or that watching a male Rufous Hummingbird dash back and forth in his madly jittering courtship display — sparkly red chin feathers fanned out, squeaking like a dog toy — is an awesome privilege your grandchildren should also have.
But isn’t it enough that hummingbirds exist at all? A thousand, a million unbroken generations, who knows how many flowers pollinated, led to the magnificent creature who pauses to sip delicately from my potted red geranium, throat flashing, the only living vertebrate who can fly backwards, transparent nectar slipping from its extended 3.5-centimeter-long tongue.
It needs no more justification for needing our help than that.
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