Hummingbird

Despite their diminutive size, hummingbirds can be decidedly aggressive (in fact they fight as much with claws as with beak), diving at and often outmanoeuvring much larger predators such as hawks and owls. While hovering, they expend something like ten times more energy per unit of weight than a human running. As with the revered quetzal - and similarly native to the Americas - it is only the male hummingbird that sports spectacular, shining colours.
Throughout Mesoamerica, the bird has been associated with brave animal spirits, ancestors and ancestral gods, bloodletting and sacrifice, the advent of the rainy spring season, with transformation, as well as with the sun. In Maya myths, the sun becomes a hummingbird to court the moon (Benson, 2001).

Pic 1: A Mexican hummingbird hovers, ready to feed...

Just as the sun can be seen shining, or not, according to prevailing atmospheric conditions, so ‘the hummingbird also shines, but its colours change and it loses its iridescence in some light conditions. The colouring and brilliancy are not caused by pigmentation, but by the structure of iridescent bands in the feather. Thus the shining miracle “can be seen only within a narrowly defined set of positions involving the bird, the sun, and the observer”’ (Hunt, 1977:67, quoting Crawford Greenwalt). The hummingbird’s shimmering blue-green reflected the sky’s brilliant daytime colour.
Gender is important in mythology. The sun god was universally considered a (young) male warrior, associated with ‘warrior birds’ such as the hawk, the eagle... and the hummingbird. The latter two were commonly believed to be avatars of the sun.

Pic 3: A couple of tiny, super fast bumblebee hummingbirds in a rarely seen mating ritual, Veracruz state, Mexico. They’re one of the smallest birds in the entire world.

Some ten largely 16th century painted manuscripts refer to a greater or lesser extent to the migration story of the Mexica from their mythical homeland Aztlan, the most important being the Codex Boturini, Codex Azcatitlan, Codex Mexicanus, Codex Aubin and the Mapa Sigüenza (Boone, 1991: 122). At one point a bird features prominently in these documents, calling on the Mexica to sally forth on their long journey from Aztlan to Lake Texcoco. It can be seen atop a hill, a tree, in a cave, sometimes in ‘human’ form - embodying their patron deity Huitzilopochtli. But what bird is it? In the Codex Azcatitlan (pic 4) and in the Codex Boturini (follow link below) it’s clearly a hummingbird, representing Huitzilopochtli. In the Codex Mexicanus (pic 5) it looks more like an eagle. Either would make sense, since both creatures were avatars of the sun god.

Pic 5: A bird beckons from a tree to the Mexica people below, urging them to depart from Aztlan in the year 1-Flint; Codex Mexicanus fol. 18

Torquemada goes on to write that Huitziton (whose name itself evokes a hummingbird) and another Mexica leader ’los dos juntos, lo dieron á entender al Pueblo; los quales, persuadidos á la ventura grande que los llamaba, por lo mucho, que de ella supieron encarecer los dos, movieron las Casas, y dejaron el Lugar [Aztlan] y siguieron la fortuna, que en lo por venir, les estaba guardada.’
Robelo suggests there are at least two other birds in the Valley of Mexico that emit a cry similar to tihui, and a third called Tihuitochan, which calls out the Nahuatl words tihui and tochan which combined translate as ‘Let’s go to our home’. We’ve been informed by friends and colleagues in Mexico* that, whilst they don’t ‘sing’ as such, hummingbirds emit all kinds of sounds - including the fabled tihui, and that they call with their beaks open (see main picture, above).

Pic 7: Hummingbird on the look-out

Sources:-
• Benson, Elizabeth P. (2001): ‘Hummingbirds’, in The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, vol. 2, editor-in-chief Davíd Carrasco, OUP
• Boone, Elizabeth Hill (1991): ‘Migration Histories as Ritual Performance’, in To Change Place: Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes, edited by Davíd Carrasco, University Press of Colorado
• ----- (2000): Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs, University of Texas Press
• Codex Azcatitlan: Commentaire (1995: facsimile edition and commentary by Robert H. Barlow with Michel Graulich, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
• Diel, Lori Boornazian (2018): The Codex Mexicanus, University of Texas Press
• Hunt, Eva (1977): The Transformation of the Hummingbird, Cornell University Press, London
• Miller, Mary & Taube, Karl (1993): The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: An Illustrated Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion, Thames & Hudson Ltd., London
• Robelo, Ceclio A. (1951): Diccionario de Mitología Nahuatl, Mexico.

Pic 9: The cover of Karel Baresh’s book ‘Hummingbird Hill’