Last week I gave you this specimen of “Pygostylia” to try your hand at identifying:

It was a bit of a tricky one, since the alizarin preparation technique has left an adult bird looking like a newly hatched chick. However, even long-billed birds like snipe and curlews start out with a relatively short bill that grows as they mature. The confusion caused by the bill led to suggestions of Cormorant, Little Bittern, Ibis, Scolopacidae and Whimbrel.

There were a few key pointers to help identify the family that this bird belongs to, not least the tiny legs, although one of them has fallen off as noted by John D’Angelo in a neat cryptic clue.

There are a few other pointers – the back and top of the skull shows an interesting feature where the hyoid loops around, which is much clearer here:

This is something I normally associate with woodpeckers, but you also see it in some other birds with very long tongues.

There is also a very short humerus, which is what clinched it for me:

The long bill and tongue and short legs and humerus make this a hummingbird (as spotted by Henry McGhie on Twitter).

Unfortunately I don’t think there’s enough information visible on the specimen to confidently identify it to species or even genus, but I think it’s probably a member of the Trochilinae, possibly one of the Mangos in the genus Anthracothorax F. Boie, 1831.

I’d like to write more, but it’s NatSCA conference time and I’m having too much fun catching up with wonderful people!