Image Credit: Steve Valasek
Hummingbirds (Trochilidae) are flycatching predators & nectarivores. Though known to prefer red tubular flowers, hummingbirds will visit flowers of any shape or color. The presence of most hummingbirds in the United States north of the southwestern deserts, southern California scrubland and the Deep South is likely to be a very recent phenomenon, one correlated with the clearing of forested Eastern US for agriculture and consequent spreading of the open-canopy flora and the appearance of suburban backyard gardens throughout the West.
Additional species of hummingbirds are currently spreading into the PNW from California. Nearly all plant genera preferred by hummingbirds are also favored by bumblebees; the evolutionary significance of hummingbird pollination is that they spread the pollen between populations as well as within them.