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All text & photos © Hilton Pond Center Shortly after friend and garden writer Nancy Brachey included a nice note about our winter hummingbird work in the 21 February 2003 issue of The Charlotte Observer, we received several E-mails about previously unreported vagrant hummers in the Carolinas. Although of those reports arrived while we were away from Hilton Pond Center in Costa Rica on 19-22 Feb, we contacted each homeowner upon our return and learned that the birds were still present. Unfortunately, we had to turn right around and go to Iowa for five days, so it wasn't until the first week in March that were able to start investigating all the reports. Even had we not gone to Iowa, however, we likely couldn't have banded any hummingbirds, since a record snowfall of up to 18" blanketed the Carolina Upstate on 25-27 Feb and made travel impossible. Our first road trip in response to the E-mails came on 2 March, when our destination was Cheraw SC in Chesterfield County, about two hours from our home base in York SC. We had heard from Sarah Ann and Rock Thompson, who reported hummingbirds had been at their feeders more or less continuously since January 2003; in other words, for two consecutive winters the Thompsons have had hummers whose presence overlapped Ruby-throated Hummingbirds that would be expected from April through October. Sarah Ann believed she had more than one hummer in the current winter of 2003-2004--perhaps as many as three or four, including a "large grayish one" that pushed aside snow on the feeder port during last week's storm. Following our usual plan, we departed Hilton Pond in time to arrive at Cheraw before sunrise. This late in the year, that meant we wanted to have our trap hanging not later than 6:40 a.m. and to have placed the Thompsons' feeder inside it as bait. Things worked according to plan, and we went into the house to stand watch for the first hummingbird of the morning. Within three minutes a bird zipped by the trap without stopping, only to pass by in the other direction a few minutes later. Then, at 6:58 a.m. a hummer flew to the trap and tried to get at the feeder through the wire mesh. After trying for another minute or two, the bird figured out the open trapdoor and entered to feed. Quickly we flipped the switch on our wireless transmitter and the servo motor that operates the trap made the door slide shut. As we went back outside to retrieve our new capture, we noticed that the hummer's throat bore several metallic orange-red feathers, and its flanks were quite rusty. Because the bird was molting the outer four pairs of tail feathers, it was difficult to see if the hummer had a rusty base to its tail--a characteristic that would have ruled out its being a Ruby-throat. After we banded the bird and jotted a few more motes, we took our usual set of photographs and Now that Sarah Ann and Rock know about our winter hummingbird work, they've promised to let us know as soon as any vagrants appear in the fall of 2004. And now that we know the way to their place in Cheraw we plan on going back to see just what's going on with all these winter hummers in the Thompson backyard. Vital Statistics for All text & photos © Hilton Pond Center
If you're interested in sharing your hummingbird observations and learning from other enthusiasts, you may wish to subscribe to Hummingbird Hobnob, our Yahoo!-based discussion group. Also be sure to visit our award-winning Web site for Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project; on it you'll find almost anything you want to know about hummingbirds, including more information about Hummingbird Banding.
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