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Blue-throated
Goldentail
(male)

A few spaces are still available for our 2010 midwinter HUMMINGBIRD
EXPEDITION
to warm, sunny Costa Rica
(Week 2 only; Belize trip is full)

Neotropical Hummingbird Expeditions

Canivet's
Emerald
(male)

Join us for the
19th Annual
York/Rock Hill
Christmas Bird Count
23 December 2009
(Click on the link above for more information.)

When Martha and Jim Evans of Moore SC noticed action at their long-vacant hummingbird feeder this week, they were a bit surprised. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds visiting all summer had disappeared by late October, and nothing else had been paying any attention to the sugar water mixture. That all changed on 6 December 2009 when a very different hummer showed up to dine. Rusty on its back and head, the little visitor left little doubt in Martha's mind she and Jim were hosting a vagrant hummingbird far away from its expected winter habitat, and she was equally confident the bird was an adult male Rufous Hummingbird, Selasphorus rufus. Martha posted her sighting to a gardening listserv and was advised pretty quickly to contact us at Hilton Pond Center, which she did via phone and e-mail on 7 December. It sounded from her description that Martha had made a correct identification, so we talked about the possibility of our making the 90-minute trip from Hilton Pond to the Evans home in Moore, just south of Spartanburg about 70 miles to our west down I-85. We were a bit under the weather and recovering from a ten-day wrestling match with a respiratory infection but hoped to get over to Moore within the week. However, when Martha's daughter, Ann Guyer, e-mailed us a photo of the vagrant hummer on 10 Dec, the bird's brightly colored plumage had a near-miraculous therapeutic effect and we immediately called Martha with our intent to be at her place early the next day.

We rose at 4:30 a.m. on 11 December and departed for Moore half an hour later. In our experience, it's best to try trapping a winter vagrant very early in the morning--preferably at or just after sunrise when the hungry hummer is making its first feeder run of the day. This procedure has worked quite well for us and we've missed our quarry only a couple of times--even though the technique has cost us many hours of midwinter sleep. We arrived at the Evans residence right at 6:30 a.m. and after meeting Martha and Jim went about hanging our portable trap on their back deck where the unusual hummingbird had been seen. We placed a feeder in the trap, set the mechanism, and retired to the kitchen where we joined Martha and Jim in pre-dawn darkness, sharing hummingbird stories and anxiously waiting for the object of our affection to show up.

At about 6:50 a.m. something buzzed past the feeder and both Martha and Jim said it was the hummingbird. We didn't get as good a look until a second fly-by at 7:10 a.m.; by then we were confident something other than a chickadee or titmouse was scoping out the trap. At precisely 7:22 a.m. the bird we wanted finally entered the trap and fed for a moment before we flicked a switch that caused the trapdoor to slide shut--after which Martha and Jim expressed considerable excitement over our capture of their wayward hummingbird. Even from inside the kitchen we could see the bird's solid rusty back (above), so we were certain it was indeed a Rufous Hummingbird.

We, too, were excited, in part because it was our first vagrant hummer of the winter season but especially because it's so seldom we get to handle an adult male Rufous. In fact, this was only our second adult male of its species in the 18 years we've been banding winter vagrants, the last one being long, long ago in 1994! We've banded 64 Rufous Hummingbird vagrants since 1991; the overwhelming majority of them (47) have been females, with just 15 immature males.

It certainly seems adult male Rufous Hummingbirds are less likely to wander than other age/sex classes. The species breeds in southern Alaska, western Canada, and the northwestern U.S. and typically overwinters in central Mexico, but for some unknown reason occasional individuals show up in eastern states--usually in late fall or early winter. Although South Carolina sightings of Rufous Hummingbirds occurred--albeit very rarely--as far back as the early 1900s, about 20 years ago reports of Rufous and several other western hummer species increased dramatically. No one knows for sure the cause; there are probably a number of environmental factors involved.

All text & photos © Hilton Pond Center

In any case, at 7:22 a.m. on 11 December we had a Rufous Hummingbird in a trap; we carefully removed it, brought it into the Evans' kitchen, and placed the bird in a paper tube for safekeeping. While Jim looked on and Martha took photos, we showed them how we measured the hummer's tail, wing chord, culmen, and mass, and how we fabricated the tiny numbered aluminum band before placing it on the bird's left leg. The whole process took less than ten minutes--including the time we took to insert the hummer's bill into a feeder port and watch it drink without any hesitation. We also made note of the bird's brilliant metallic gorget (above)--much more orange than the deep red of an adult male Ruby-throated Hummingbird. (We wondered whether the irregular lower edge of the gorget on the Rufous was an indicator this bird was a relatively young adult.) When measurements and banding were complete, we took the bird back onto the deck for photos--including a shot of Martha (above left) holding her vagrant Rufous Hummingbird just before it exploded from her hand and made a beeline across the yard.

All text & photos © Hilton Pond Center

With that we took down the trap, re-hung the hummingbird feeder, and packed up our banding gear; we also set up our camera on a tripod with a 400mm telephoto lens aiming through the patio door glass at the feeder about 20 feet away. As Martha treated us to homemade coffee cake and some hot herbal tea with honey, we watched the feeder in the hope her Rufous would show up again. It wasn't long before this supposedly "out-of-range" and now-banded vagrant returned to the feeder, sat down in the still-dim morning light (above), and spent a few minutes lapping up sugar water--none the worse for wear and ready to make winter much more interesting for the Evans family. We thank Martha and Jim for their hospitality and for allowing us to visit and work with their colorful avian visitor.

All text & photos © Hilton Pond Center

Comments or questions about this week's installment?
Please send an E-mail message to INFO.

Be sure to scroll down for an account of all
birds banded or recaptured during the period,
plus other nature notes of interest.

Thanks to the following fine folks for recent gifts in support of Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History and/or Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project. Your tax-deductible contributions allow us to continue writing, photographing, and sharing "This Week at Hilton Pond." (Please see Support if you'd like to make a gift of your own. You can also contribute by ordering an Operation RubyThroat T-shirt.)

• Alice Slisher ("Oh-Sixer" alum from our 2006 Costa Rica hummingbird expedition)
• Marie Baumann (Costa Rica trip alum, one of the "Lucky Sevens"; Marie's artistic rendering of our photo of an immature male Ruby-throated Hummingbird is below)

Hummingbird Image © Marie Baumann