Heliomaster pinicola
星喉蜂鸟属
Heliomaster pinicola
Pine Star-throat
About this plate
Mexico
The late Damiano Floresi will always be remembered by Trochilidists as one who has been the means of making known to us many of the Humming Birds of Mexico, and in acknowledging the value of his exertions, I feel that I am only rendering justice to one to whom we are all so largely indebted, and I would add, that none of his numerous friends more sincerely regrets his premature decease than myself.
It is to him that we owe the discovery of the bird figured on the accompanying Plate. M. Floresi informed me that the almost sole habitat of this species is the lofty pine ridges of Northern Mexico, a circumstance affording additional evidence that a peculiar vegetation is accompanied by a corresponding peculiarity in animal life; thus, the vegetation of its habitat being of a sombre character, the colouring of the present bird is of a similar hue, rendering it conspicuously different from most other Humming Birds. It is the northern or Mexican representative of the H. Constanti of Guatemala, to which it is very nearly allied, but from which it differs in being somewhat larger in size, in having a more mealy grey style of plumage, in the feathers of the red gorget being of a crimson rather than a scarlet hue, in their occupying the lower part of the throat only, and in each of these feathers being fringed with grey.
The same difference in the size of the sexes occurs in this as in the other species, and the female also differs from her mate in having a trace only of the gorget on the lower part of the throat.
Head, upper surface, wing- and tail-coverts dull bronzy green, passing into dark grey on the forehead; wings dull purplish brown; two centre tail-feathers bronzy green, tipped with purplish black; lateral feathers bronzy green at the base, passing into purplish black; the extent of the green decreasing and of the black increasing as the feathers recede from the centre, each with a spot of white at the tip, that on the outer one occupying both webs, but not reaching quite to the margin of the outer one, the white spot on the others at the extremity of the inner web and gradually decreasing in size; spot behind the eye, streak down the cheeks, streak down the rump, tuft on each flank, and vent, white; upper part of the throat dark grey, each feather narrowly fringed with white; lower part of the throat deep luminous crimson, each feather margined with grey; under tail-coverts brown, largely tipped with white; bill black; feet dark brown.
The figures represent the two sexes of the size of life.
By some inadvertence the term Heliomaster has been printed on the Plate Helioster.
References
- Heliomaster pinicola, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc. 1853.
Twelve ways of seeing
- slightly upright 1.27 : 1
- published 1854
- Pl. 261, Vol. IV
Not a catalogue entry but a way of looking: how to stand, what to notice, how the line was cut, when it flowers, where it came from, who made it — and then the poems and the classics that taught China to see the same flower. Read the twelve in order and the plate opens.
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First Look
夫象物必在于形似，形似须全其骨气。
—— 唐·张彦远《历代名画记》
Likeness is the threshold; bone-and-breath is the point.
Slightly taller than wide; the eye lands on the bird's head, a little above centre. Then step in close: watch where colour meets line, and whether the line ever breaks. Third, find the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there.
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Name and Thing
The binomial is Heliomaster pinicola: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. The Chinese name 星喉蜂鸟属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
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Form and Colour
The smallest of birds: a needle-fine bill, a forked tubular tongue, wings beating so fast the bird hovers and even flies backwards. Its colour is not pigment but structure — light bent by feather barbules, changing with the angle.No colour group is recorded. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
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Composition
Slightly taller than wide, the bird set a little above centre, the eye landing at head and bill. (about 1.27 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Old plates set the plant slightly off centre, with unequal margins — that small imbalance is what keeps it alive.
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Line and Colour
In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. Take a loupe to three places: petal edge, leaf vein, caption. An unbroken line means engraving; colour crossing the outline means a hand.
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Season
In tropical America they are present all year, their season set by flowers; temperate hummingbirds follow the bloom north and back, thousands of kilometres a year. The year 1854 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The plate records ten days of peak; the other three hundred are leaf, fruit and rest.
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Provenance
Americas only, from southern Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, richest in the Andes. China has no hummingbirds and no classical record of them; the name arrives with late-Qing travel writing. The localities on the plate are those of a century ago; plants travel and places change their names.
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The Book and the Hand
“Gould's Hummingbirds” was drawn by John Gould and published 1849-1887. This plate is Pl. 261, Vol. IV, book page 261. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
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Poetic Resonance
夫列子御风而行，泠然善也，旬有五日而后反。
—— 《庄子·逍遥游》
Liezi rode the wind and came back after fifteen days, so light was his going.
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the bird itself becomes its resting point.
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The Written Tradition
竖划三寸，当千仞之高；横墨数尺，体百里之迥。
—— 南朝宋·宗炳《画山水序》
A vertical stroke of three inches stands for a cliff of a thousand fathoms; a few feet of ink holds a hundred li. Smallness of scale was never the obstacle.
Gould's Hummingbirds (1849–1887) used hand-coloured lithography over gold leaf so the iridescence survived on paper — a monument to Victorian printing and collecting alike. Keep the line; it will surface the next time you meet the same plant.
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Symbolism
For the Aztecs the hummingbird was warrior and sun; for Victorian Europe it was the ultimate ornament, millions killed for breast jewellery. China has no tradition here — and that blank is itself a history of exchange. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
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What to Take Away
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1854 gave a whole day to a single flower.
