June 8, 2017

Lunchtime Photo

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A couple of months ago, after vast effort, I posted some spectacular pictures of one of our backyard hummingbirds. I wanted to know what kind of hummingbird it was, and figured it should be no problem identifying it. But our bird commenters failed me. “We need to see it from behind,” they wailed. Sheesh.

But today is our lucky day! I saw Hopper become intently interested in something, and when I followed her gaze there was a hummingbird facing away from me. I had time for one quick photo, and this is it. So I’m giving the bird people a second chance. I don’t actually know if this is the same variety of hummingbird as last time, but it probably is, don’t you think? And now we have both front and back photos. So what is this little guy?

ANSWER: Juvenile male Anna’s hummingbird. Unless someone decides to argue about this.

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THE BIG PICTURE

You expect the big picture, and it's our job at Mother Jones to give it to you. And right now, so many of the troubles we face are the making not of a virus, but of the quest for profit, political or economic (and not just from the man in the White House who could have offered leadership and comfort but instead gave us bleach).

In "News Is Just Like Waste Management," we unpack what the coronavirus crisis has meant for journalism, including Mother Jones’, and how we can rise to the challenge. If you're able to, this is a critical moment to support our nonprofit journalism with a donation: We've scoured our budget and made the cuts we can without impairing our mission, and we hope to raise $400,000 from our community of online readers to help keep our big reporting projects going because this extraordinary pandemic-plus-election year is no time to pull back.

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