The story of the bird
A blur of wings, held still. The Ruby-throated Hummingbird hovers at the trumpet vine, gorget catching the light, one angle and it blazes ruby-red, tilt it thirty degrees and it goes flat black. The plate catches that exact in-between moment, the throat luminous against a warm cream ground, the deep tubular blooms framing a bird smaller than most of the flowers it drinks from.
The print
A fine-art study in a contemporary Audubon-inspired natural-history style with a soft paper-grain finish, drawn close so every feather and bloom reads clearly. Printed to archival standards so the colour holds for decades.
Paper and finish
Unframed prints come on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm, a heavyweight archival cotton rag with a soft matte surface. Choose the framed option and the print arrives mounted, glazed and ready to hang, in your choice of black, white or natural frame.
Sizes
Three sizes: 8 x 10, 16 x 20 and 24 x 30 inches. Prints from $39. Framed from $99.
About the bird
The Ruby-throated Hummingbird is the only hummingbird that breeds widely in eastern North America, and the classic garden visitor for anyone east of the Rockies. The male’s gorget is not pigment but structural colour, microscopic platelets in the feather barbs that catch and bend light. This bird weighs about three grams, less than a US nickel, and yet each autumn it roughly doubles its body weight in fat before crossing the Gulf of Mexico in a single non-stop flight of 800 kilometres. Trumpet vine, with its long scarlet tubes, is among its preferred nectar sources on the breeding grounds, and the bird fits the flower perfectly.
Full field guide: /species/ruby-throated-hummingbird/
