Hooked on Hummingbirds Part 2: Beauty...and the Beast (DVD -2010) Starring 65 hummingbird species and 15 other bird species

Tom Kaminski, of the Avian Video Center, has done it again! You are definitely going to want this great new DVD in your library of hummingbird resources. This superb work by Tom features all 16 species of hummingbirds that breed in the United States. The video is filled with a total of 65 hummer species in all. If that doesn't fully get your attention, Tom has included on this stunning DVD 15 other bird species....Inside the DVD enclosure, Tom has included a list of all the species you will see. This list is by common names such as you will see in your field guides, and does include the scientific names as well. Some selected scenes from this remarkable DVD were shown nationally on the television production Animal Planet. --Netlines, Bob Sargent, ed. and pres., Hummer/Bird Study Group, Clay, Alabama

Hummingbirds are adorable, right? Wrong, says the producer of a new film about the tiny, hovering creatures -- at least if you're another hummingbird. Naturalist Tom Kaminski's new film does of course include a wealth of stunning footage of, yes, adorable hummingbirds. But it also exposes the birds' dark side: their fights over territory, complete with rules of engagement, their petty jealousies, their attacks on other animals -- self-centered and anti-social, Kaminski calls them. They will, like other birds, mob predators, he said. That is the only time you see hummingbirds cooperate about anything. Feather-weight fights are common, he said. You see them drill their bills into the heads of other hummingbirds, into their necks, or actually landing on the backs of other hummingbirds to pull [them] off...feeder[s], he said. Kaminski's film also details how hummingbirds hover -- with rapid-fire, figure-8 wingbeats -- and explodes a few hummingbird myths: for instance, that they are single-mindedly focused on finding red flowers. In reality, he said, abundance and taste of nectar come before color on the hummingbird priority list. The 57-minute film, Hummingbirds! Beauty and the Beast, shows all 16 U.S. species, and 57 hummingbird species in all, plus 17 species of other birds.... --Pat Brennan, Green Living/Environment Editor, Orange County [CA] Register, 19 Nov. 09